Angel's Mercy
by ThePsiFiles
Summary: "The Angel stalks the streets, hunting down perps for Judge Death". A multiple homicide brings Anderson back to Mercy Hospital, a place that looms large in her childhood, and she is forced to confront her own weaknesses as she is taken on a dark journey into the self by an old acquaintance and new enemy. Can Cornelius and Quartermain save her from herself?
1. Baptism

**A/n :** Detailed author's notes for this story appear at the end of each chapter. General notes about my "Dredd" fanon setting (and links to inspiration pictures etc.) appear on my profile.

This story takes place in late September, about two weeks after "Bee-Movie".

The initial inspiration for this story was a short piece of description / history in chapter 12 of Rhinne's "Shielded", as well as some of the scenes following. I spoke with Rhinne and she was very positive about my using some of her imagery and ideas in a story here – that is why she appears as "Med-Judge Rhinne". To be clear, my stories and Rhinne's are _not_ canonical for each other, but I was inspired by them. You do not need to have read her stories to understand mine, but you should read them and review them, because they are very good!

If you enjoyed this story (and even if you didn't) please review – even if it is just a "good fic / bad fic" review (although more detail is nice). Without reviews, I don't know if I am writing things people want to read, or what needs to be changed or have more of / less of for future stories.

I have a _very_ simple rule – if you leave a review for me, I _will_ leave a review for you. I don't care what sort of stories you write, or even if I am familiar with the fandom – I will leave a review.

**Angel's Mercy**

**Prog 1 : Baptism**

The Judge braked as quickly as he dared as he drove into the downpour, his lawmaster's terrain-sensitive electro-rubber instantly molding itself from slicks to precision-tailored rain tires. "Weather Control," he said tightly, briskly scrolling through data on his HUD – there was no rain planned or requested, "unexpected heavy precipitation sector nine my GPS – are you aware?"

"We are aware, Judge." Weather Control's reply was immediate and brusque. "MetModNet is experiencing no malfunctions, the board is green." Abruptly, the communication cut.

The Judge turned to his partner, driving like him at now-cautious speeds, blues-and-twos wailing, late-night traffic getting out of their way as they responded to the call. "I guess it's just raining, Sir," she offered blithely.

He shook his head. "It doesn't 'just rain', Cadet," he told her. "Not in this city – stay sharp."

She smiled, her sensuous lips twisting beneath the helmet. "Yessir," she murmured. She might be green as raw munce, but even she knew that – to a Judge – rain was a warning sign.

In the teeming-horror of Mega City One, a purely-artificial human-termite mound sustained by technology and hubris within and atop radioactive ruins, weather could not be left to chance. Trapped between the windswept Cursed Earth and the storm-tossed Black Atlantic, hundreds of millions of people and the masses of industry required to support them were squashed into a space insufficient to support half that number. Exhaled breath, belching chimneys, run-off from the factories all poured themselves into the shattered environment – an ecosystem still reeling from the Atomic Wars three decades before, and entirely unable to process the waste and pollution naturally.

Nature tried, of course – it was less than a generation before bacteria evolved specifically to eat nuclear waste, plasteen-slag, and the rest. With worms and beetles and all kinds of vermin feasting on them an entire ecosubsystem based on humanity's garbage soon sprang up. But, as was always the case in the megacity, technology solved the problems it created; resyk, the sewerage and water-processing systems, and – of course – Weather Control.

Technically speaking, the array of satellites, sensing- and seeding-drones, atmospheric temperature and humidity management stations, deep-sea controls and a host of other technologies were called 'the Meteorological Modification Network' or MetModNet – but everyone, even the Department, called it 'Weather Control'. The intent was to blunt excesses; to keep the most destructive storms, heatwaves, typhoons, monsoons and hurricanes outside the boundary wall, to direct enough rain to the water reclamation plants in the Appalachian Mountains south of the city, and to make sure that what precipitation _did_ fall on the streets was clean, decontaminated, and not actually a rain of mutated rad-frogs (as had, as weather control never tired of explaining to the laughing citizens touring their facilities, happened _more than once _before). Most often, rain inside the city was light, sporadic showers, between 11PM and 6AM – intended to clean the streets, keep the dust down, irrigate what few patches of greenery remained or had been planted.

But there were times when it was not, when a Judge would place a call to Weather Control and the met-men would get to sit up and focus, perhaps calling shift commanders at home, certainly reaching for keys and unlocking the covers of rarely-used switches and controls.

There were many weapons the Judges could bring to bear against a riot or demonstration – diplomacy was, perhaps surprisingly, often used and effective. A line or wedge of black-and-bronze officers, with weapons ranging from daysticks and shields, through semi-powered riot armor, all the way to riot foam, stumm gas, sonic cannons, urban tanks and even heavy artillery and air support was inevitably deployed. But the first and best option, taught by every single Tutor in Urban Pacification 101, was to call in the Department's most reliable and effective officer – Judge Rain.

No matter how important the cause, how eager the demonstrators, how crazy the riot, a siling, torrential downpour of cold water dampened the ardor of the most hard-core protester. The instant the Judges suspected a riot or illegal (or _undesired_) demonstration, they called Weather Control and the heavens opened; a localized cloudburst that lasted as long as needed and only affected the immediate area, that drenched the streets and soaked perps to the bone, sending them scurrying and shivering back home. If they _did_ think to take preemptive precautions, well – the six-month sentence for 'brandishing an umbrella or other device intended to guard against precipitation in a public space without a permit' was another useful weapon in quelling riots.

As effective as it was, heavy rain very quickly became associated in a Judge's mind with riots, with battle, with highly-strung nerves and the need to have eyes in the back of your head to stop it getting blown off. When rain dripped from your armor, it was a fair bet blood wouldn't be far behind – if you were lucky, the downpour might last long enough to clean the worst off.

As a Cadet, Quartermain hadn't experienced an actual riot, and although the Academy's training reproduced them with startling fidelity – using live ammunition and sprinklers in the ceilings of warehouses mocked up like actual city locations – she didn't have a more seasoned Judge's instinctive response to rain. But she could understand her patrol partner's – okay, _supervising field-trip Tutor_, if you wanted to be technical – wariness at the unexpected downpour.

For the past two weeks, Cornelius had been leading Quartermain on standard ten-hour bike patrols. In the aftermath of the city-wide chaos caused by the Lord of the Flies' demands, sector chiefs had needed all the tires on the streets they could get and never refused help. He was a good partner and better mentor, and Quartermain had to admit she was enjoying it. She hadn't made _too_ many egregious mistakes (certainly nothing that would have got a Rookie an automatic fail, or a Cadet expelled) and Cornelius seemed _at least_ middling-pleased with her work. It was, she was coming to realize, one thing to Judge in the squad room or even during a single engagement; it was quite another to keep that focus and performance through ten-hour shifts six days a week.

They reached the rain-slick plaza in front of their destination and pulled off the road to drive through the empty expanse of poured rockcrete slabs gleaming with blue-white reflections. The square was ringed with faux-iron street lamps, most of them burned out – what illumination there was came from the full moon revealed and obscured by scudding gray clouds. The lawmasters' headlights cut a long white tunnel through the haze, individual raindrops sparkling like falling jewels. As they drove across the plaza towards it, Cornelius studied the building and recalled what he knew of its history.

The Mercy Judicial &amp; Civil Medical Center – usually called Mercy Hospital and popularly known as Angel's Mercy after the statue standing just outside the main entrance – had been built twenty-five years before; part of the great project of rebuilding and infrastructure expansion after the destruction of the Atomic Wars and the mass immigration and forced relocation to Mega City One from the Cursed Earth and elsewhere. The popular movement of the time for administrative buildings had been Judicial Brutalism, and the building showed all the hallmarks of that architectural style; it was massive in character even though not particularly large (a single central tower of a score-or-so of storeys, flanked by two wings with about a dozen floors apiece), fortress-like (even down to the monstrous portcullis at the front of the tower) and with a predominance of exposed, rugged rockcrete construction. The northern wing of the building – to the right of the main entrance as you were looking at it – had its dark blue-gray facade leavened with heavy horizontal striping in sandstone-tan. The southern wing had been decorated – as was common in Judicial Brutalism – with an oversized eagle of justice. It had once been gilded – or at least sheathed in anodized aluminum – but as Mercy fell into disuse and disrepair the scavengers came calling, stripping away the metal sheeting to reveal the rotting, rusting skeleton underneath. Some attempt had been made, before the hospital was finally closed, to cover the wounds with tarps, but now – five years later – the result was pitiful to see. Ropes and cables had frayed and snapped, and great sheets of black plastic, leathery with nearly a decade of filth and wear, flapped in the wind on the skeleton of the wings like the membrane of a bat. With the golden feathers ripped away, the eagle's head was scrawny and angular, its eye empty sockets staring blindly south.

Mercy had been built as a showpiece medical center, intended to provide cutting-edge treatment and services to citizens and Judges alike in an attempt to build good-feeling between the Department and those they policed. For the first few years the plan worked well – Mercy was at the forefront of medical research and development, performing groundbreaking procedures and saving untold thousands of lives. Its reputation for excellence as well as the opportunities for research and study meant the best and the brightest doctors applied to work there.

Perhaps it was its success that was its downfall – as a model medical facility, the Department discouraged (if not outright forbade) turning patients away, regardless of their ability to pay for increasingly-expensive treatment. Budgets became tighter, forcing corners to be cut. The best doctors left, those who remained sometimes had ulterior motives for staying. Soon, what had once been the foremost medical center in MegEast and the preferred destination for the richest patients was avoided by anyone with decent insurance and only patronized by those with no other choice. Exactly what had happened after that Cornelius didn't know – but, judging from the carrion-stripped appearance of the ruined building, it was a fair bet the hospital had eventually been closed, the city's scavengers descending on it an an orgy of rape and pillage, ripping and tearing everything of value out of it and selling it on the black market within hours of the doors shuttering.

All in all, it was a depressing, cadaverous end for what had once been a preeminent research and teaching hospital. Like so much in this Grud-forsaken city, what had started out bright and promising and shiny ended in ruin, decay and squalor – if not outright crime and depravity. Like all condemned buildings it would be filled with gangbangers and tappers, pimps and hoes, cookers and pushers with their narcofabs and hit-houses. It would take a squad or two of Judges to sweep it clear, gathering evidence for sentencing and execution. And then they should tear the thing down and 'crete over the wound and let the city heal.

They reached the main entrance – the portcullis was a faux detail, a lattice of iron-effect plasteen bars looking half-raised. The actual doors were underneath – shattered and broken, their once-pristine white now dirty ivory, they looked like a mouthful of twisted teeth. The statue stood a few yards in front of the doors; wings outstretched and sword held aloft, it was a colossal angel, a gigantic muscular nude in white plasteen, gleaming in the bikes' headlights. The top of its pedestal was level with Cornelius' chin, but even without that the figure would have been half as tall again as he was. The carving was harsh and sharp, each muscle cut and defined with anatomical precision, the face an expressionless mask of terrible beauty.

There was no graffiti on the statue – surprising, perhaps, as the facade of the building, the statue's plinth and even the pavement itself was sprayed and vandalized with tags and more complex designs. But the statue was untouched.

At least with paint; rain had washed the statue mostly clean of the thick coat of blood that must have plastered it not so long ago, but puddles and pockets of crimson still remained in the crevices and the monstrous planes of plasteen muscle shone with a faint pink flush as if the creature had been working out.

Cornelius glanced at Quartermain as they studied the grisly tableau – three broken and mangled corpses, limbs hacked and torn off, one cut completely in half, lay at the base of the statue in a discarded tangle, with a fourth figure impaled on the angel's upthrust blade, its back arched against the quillons of the sword. All four of them were naked, their clothes nowhere to be seen. Quartermain's face was set, her prominent lips compressed into a thin line, but she was holding it together. The corpses were pale, lying in a spreading pool of bloody water. There was something wrong here, and it took Cornelius a moment to realize – the plaza was deserted, eerily silent and still. Even on a rainswept night, outside an abandoned facility like this, a multiple homicide should have drawn gawkers and rubber-neckers, a crowd to keep back – but there was nothing and no-one except . . . "Med-Judge Rhinne?" he asked the woman in justice-blue fatigues with her back to them. "Got your call."

Rhinne actually jumped as she turned. "Oh!" she exclaimed, surprised. "I didn't expect anyone to . . . that is, thanks for coming." It took Cornelius a moment and another few words to place her accent. She studied them closely. "You're not sector nine, are you?" she realized.

Cornelius shook his head. "Psi-Division – John Cornelius, Cadet Jacqueline Quartermain. What's the deal?"

"Michelle Rhinne, I'm the administrator here." The Med-Judge was maybe fifteen years older than Cornelius, perhaps a little more – it was difficult to tell with the rain and her porcelain regularity of feature. She was handsome, with beyond-black hair and almond-shaped eyes almost as dark. There was a staccato sophistication to her accent – it had been smoothed over by years of Mega City One service, but it was definitely Hong Tong. "Four victims, male, adult. Three have suffered gross traumatic dismemberment of acute aspect and attendant haemorrhage leading to hypovolemia and ultimately exsanguination. The fourth has suffered superficial abrasions and ecchymoses as a result of antemortem blunt trauma, in addition to a transfixing traumatic injury passing transversally between the eleventh and twelfth thoracic vertebrae causing spinal cord transection and severe trauma to the viscera."

Cornelius didn't quite smile. "Not really the question I was asking, doc," he admitted. He gestured at the impaled victim's intestines strewn over the angel's wings like macabre garlands. "That have a _technical_ name?" he asked.

Rhinne seemed unaware of the gentle mockery. "The removal of elements of the gastrointestinal tract is called evisceration," she said shortly. "Based on the blood splatter it was done antemortem."

"Our killer has a flair for the dramatic," murmured Cornelius. "But I meant; why didn't you expect a response? I know things are bad but . . . a quadruple homicide? That should get _some_ kind of attention." Rhinne gave a ghastly shrug.

"Sector nine doesn't care," she said. "Off the record, I think they welcome it – all of the victims are criminals."

"These aren't the first killings," realized Cornelius – it wasn't a question. Rhinne shook her head.

"It's been happening on and off for the last five years," she explained.

"Since the hospital closed?" he asked.

Rhinne's well-made face demurred into a frown. "'Ceased to accept new patients and was taken off the triage and ER registers'," she corrected him sourly.

"Ah." Cornelius nodded – he might not appreciate the details of the politics, but he could understand they were there. "And that's why you're 'administrator' here, _Med-Judge_ Rhinne, right? If it's closed, it becomes sector nine's problem – but, until then, it's MedDiv's responsibility, not theirs."

Rhinne nodded. "I guess someone's got an in with the heavy-bronze," she admitted. "It's been kept on our books even though the building's a deserted ruin. I run a clinic out of a field-station over there." She gestured towards the edge of the plaza – there was a much-battered MedDiv trailer sunk wearily on failing suspension and punctured tires lurking almost at the edge of the circle of sight the rain allowed. "I do first response, urgent care, patch up slidewalkers after their pimps slap 'em around, detox the odd tweaker." She shrugged and gave a weak smile. "I try to help."

"How frequent are the killings?" asked Cornelius.

"Oh," said Rhinne, "two, three times a month?" She ran a hand through her sopping hair, a very-slight tremor in her fingers betraying the constant horror she endured. Only now, as they caught the light, did Cornelius notice the strands of silver-gray riven through it. "Always criminals – gangers, mostly, but there've been a few cold-cases that got solved when forensics matched a vic to evidence from a crime scene. I put the reports in but . . . well, like I say, SectComm isn't bothered so long as it's perps getting sliced up."

"All the vics left like this?" Cornelius asked. "On and around the angel?" She nodded. "Hmm." He turned to Quartermain. "What do you make of it, Cadet?"

Quartermain had been staring at the angel like a neopagan child looking up at a Christmas tree, but now she stirred herself, crouching down and craning her neck to look at the tattoos decorating the corpses' skin. "Vics are color-cut," she said, "made men. I'd say this was a vigilante or cleaner, dealing with rivals on his gang's turf. He's sending a message, posing them around the statue like this. Avenging angel and all that." She looked up at Cornelius, who nodded approvingly.

Rhinne's gaze was fixed on the statue's grotesque gorgeousness, the harsh planes of its perfect face, the terrible beauty and threat in its fearsome build and upthrust blade. "I always thought it was odd," she remarked, her voice faraway. "Such a brutal figure – the sword, the stance. I would have expected something . . . lighter for Mercy, you know?"

Cornelius smiled. "You don't read the Bible much, do you, doc?" he asked. She glared at him with narrowed eyes.

"Don't have much time for subversive literature, or fairytales," she said coldly.

Neither Cornelius nor Quartermain looked offended, although that was due to long practice. "Well," he said easily, "if you did, you would know angels aren't all sweetness and light." He turned and looked up at the gigantic figure looming threateningly over them, the rainwater cleansing, the victim impaled on the sword. "Imagine what such a creature must be like – at the service of love and justice, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Heh." He laughed, realizing. "I suppose some of us have the imagining easier than others." He turned to Rhinne, taking in her disbelieving look. "You know that every time an angel appears in the Scriptures the first thing he says is 'be not afraid'?" he told her. "You can call 'em what you want, but angeltales are not about fairies."

"Every time _but one_." Cornelius turned and looked down at Quartermain, who explained. "'Be not afraid' is the first thing they say every time _but once_, Sir – you know which one?"

Cornelius smiled. "_You_'re testing _me_, Cadet?" he asked. She shrugged. "The Annunciation, _La Madre de Dios_. You got surveillance of the plaza?" he asked Rhinne. She shook her head.

"There's a localized EM dampening field over the hospital itself," she said. "Tek can't explain it, not that they've really tried. Get much closer to the building and your electronics go haywire and shut down. There isn't much coverage at the best of times – vandalism. I installed a couple of cameras on my clinic, but whenever there's a homicide they fritz out – they come back up afterwards."

"What a coincidence," said Cornelius in a voice that suggested exactly the opposite.

Rhinne rolled her eyes. "It's related to the deadzone, has to be," she opined. "Whoever is doing this doesn't want to be seen – so he uses some gizmo to mess up the cameras. He probably keeps it inside the hospital, turns up the power or whatever. It must mess with Weather Control, too – that would explain the rain."

Cornelius and Quartermain shared a look. "'Explain the rain', Ma'am?" the Cadet said – both a question and a request.

"Every time there's a homicide . . . it rains," Rhinne said simply. She shrugged. "Like I say, it's probably . . ."

Quartermain shook her head. "Another coincidence?" she asked. "Sorry, Ma'am – but I don't buy it. The imagery fits, Sir," she told Cornelius. "Rain washing clean, either to purify the killer of his guilt, or as a symbol of the 'forgiveness' the sinners' deaths represent. Meterokenes have been documented – the rain's likely an accidental manifestation of his subconscious desires."

Cornelius wasn't about to presume anything. "You have reason to believe this is a psi, Cadet?" he asked. "Over and above the fact _you_ requested we patrol in sector nine today?" he clarified before she could speak.

Quartermain blushed as red as her hair, the rain cold on her cheeks, but she smiled nevertheless. "Well, if _that_ was anything more than coincidence, it was subconscious, Sir," she admitted. "But, actually . . . yes." She crouched by one of the corpses. "You done autopsies on the vics, Ma'am?" she asked. Rhinne shook her head.

"Not on these, no . . ."

"But others?" Quartermain gestured at faint tracks of some sticky pink residue leaking from eyes, nose and ears; it hadn't washed away as easily as the splattered blood. "That's cerebrospinal fluid," she said. "There was intracranial bleeding, together with a thickening of the fluid. Let me guess," she asked Rhinne, demonstrating her own solid grasp of medical terminology, "the other vics showed the same pathology, together with inflammation of the myelin sheath protecting the axions and haemorrhaging throughout the spinal column's capillar net?"

"Yes," said Rhinne, amazed. "How did you . . . ?"

"Aftermath of psionic assault," Quartermain told Cornelius abruptly. "Trauma didn't kill these creeps – oh, it killed their bodies," she assured Rhinne in the face of the Med-Judge's blustered objections, "but they were already dead when that happened. Our perp fried their brains, sucked the life right out of them. This is a psi-crime, definitely our beat."

Cornelius nodded, lifting his wrist. "Cornelius to _Aegis_," he said. "Put Cassie on, can you? . . . I need you at my GPS . . . that's right, there some problem? . . . ASAP . . . you can put down in the plaza, don't come over the hospital itself – EMP deadzone . . . see you soon, Cornelius out." Rhinne rolled her eyes.

"You don't need to bother yourselves!" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect a response – I only log the reports because I _have_ to. Meat wagons will be here tomorrow morning – or the next day – to clean 'em up. They'll go to resyk."

"Four people are _dead_," said Cornelius sharply, "and Grud-knows how many more before. Perps or not, they deserve more than just being shoveled onto the conveyor. I'm a little drokking pissed sector nine haven't treated this more seriously – they don't care 'cause it's perps getting slabbed? That's negligent at best – vigilantism is a _crime_, regardless of the target. What happens if this creep starts taking out innocents?"

"Oh, you don't need to get them involved!" Rhinne was almost pleading. "Judge Gibson knows – the hospital's part of his beat, he's chief of alpha shift. I don't want him to . . ." Her voice trailed off, unwilling to say more.

"You don't want him to _what_, doc?" Cornelius asked. She hung her head and remained silent. Cornelius nodded slowly as the credit-chip dropped. "You wanna talk about the gitaskog in the room? Gibson's written this off as the ravings of a crazy because you told him the angel was doing the killing, right?"

She shook her head furiously. "No!" she said emphatically. "Absolutely not – I _never_ said that. But . . ." Once again, she scrubbed through her hair with a trembling hand. "The wounds on the bodies are consistent with the sword – I mean, it could be a lot of other weapons, too . . ."

Quartermain looked from the brutal butchery lying at her feet to the angel's sword and back again. "Such as?" she asked, not unreasonably.

"Mil-grade vibroaxe and an exo-suit?" suggested Rhinne, a little desperately. "And the armor could be mocked up like the angel, too – that would explain . . ."

"Powered weapons in the middle of a deadzone?" countered Quartermain. She gestured at the perp impaled on the statue's blade "And what about that? That wound killed him – it wasn't postmortem, you said so yourself. The point of that sword's seven yards off the deck if it's an inch – how'd he get up there?"

Cornelius gestured her to silence. "The perp being dressed like an angel would explain_ what_, doc?" he asked. "The _witnesses_ you've got which say the angel killed 'em?"

Rhinne threw up her hands. "They're spugging _spark-heads_! Amped to the eyeballs on dope!" Exasperation made her discard her precise medical terminology. "Their testimony isn't worth jack – who knows _what_ they saw?"

"But I'm willing to bet their testimonies are consistent," Cornelius pointed out – Rhinne's silence showed he'd hit the mark. "So, you reported the killings, Gibson responded, you gave him the information and he thought you were crazy?"

Rhinned nodded. "I'm not sure I'm _not_," she admitted. "It's absolutely insane – but nothing else _fits _. . ."

Cornelius was sympathetic. "Don't worry, doc," he assured her, "I'm not saying the statue animated and killed them, but at the very least, someone's going to a lot of effort to make it _look_ as if it did. All the evidence points to a rogue psi; a vigilante frying perps' brains, making tweakers hallucinate, screwing around with Weather Control. That's our beat, what I draw a pay-check for." He looked down at Quartermain. "Nicely done, Cadet," he said.

She shrugged modestly. "I do some of my best work when I don't mean to, Sir," she quipped.

Rhinne gave a weak smile – it was hard to tell if the water in her eyes was rain or not. "Thank you," she said with feeling. "It's been a bad five years – that's how long I've been here, since this place quote-unquote 'closed'. This was never a good part of town, but it's gone to Dok since then."

"Perps moved into the building?" asked Cornelius, looking warily up at the blank, empty windows. He would have expected them to look like hundreds of sightless eyes, staring down at him, unseen watchers behind them – but they didn't. He felt the weight of scrutiny, but it seemed to come from the behind the half-raised portcullis; a single, malignant attention. He shivered and shook himself – the bleak surroundings, the disquietingly-deserted plaza and the grim baptism of torrential rain was getting to him.

Rhinne shook her head, drops of water scattering from her hair, actually smiled. "You don't understand," she said. "Everyone's terrified of this place – they give it a wide berth. Scavengers stripped the outside, of course, but very few were brave or crazy enough to go in. No-one even crosses the plaza unless they have to – only the most desperate come to my clinic. I've requested transfer a couple of times, but . . ."

"And the killings," said Quartermain. She flicked her head upwards. "You have to deal with this, every week or two."

"I can handle the blood, the death," Rhinne said. "I'm a Med-Judge – I'm used to it. But . . ." She looked at Cornelius. "Like you say – there's no explanation that make sense and doesn't sound insane. The first time I reported it, I thought something would be done – but Gibson just laughed; said I was loony as the hobos. I have to report each homicide, but I know they don't take it seriously – I might as well be one of the crazies, whispering that the angel stalks the streets, hunting down perps for Judge Death."

There was thick, rain-soaked silence that – had this been a vid-drama – would have been punctuated with a crack of thunder and a bolt of lightning. As it was, only Quartermain wasn't actually surprised there _wasn't_ such a blast of pathetic fallacy. "What?" asked Cornelius flatly.

Rhinne looked at him askance. "You don't _know_?" she asked. "You don't know," she realized.

"Don't know _what_?"

"What happened here – Rindón, the experiments?"

Cornelius shook his head. "I know this place was built twenty-five years ago – it was a good hospital for a while, but the budget wasn't there. Went downhill after that."

"That's true," admitted Rhinne, "but there was more. MedDiv didn't want to lose Mercy – they'd invested too-much into it. About seventeen years ago, they made Med-Judge Fausto Rindón administrator – doctors weren't sending citizens here unless they had to, but that didn't bother him."

"He was on the take?" asked Cornelius. "Dealing dope, what?"

Rhinne smiled. "Wish he was," she said. "Dunno that he wasn't, actually, but that wasn't the problem. He had patients – the Department sent Judges here for treatment, of course, but he was also doing a lot of . . . _research_." The weight of euphemism was heavy in her voice. "This was the mid-80s; the children conceived and born shortly after the war were entering puberty – there were a lot of . . ." She glanced at Quartermain, embarrassed.

"_Divergences_," the Cadet said firmly.

Rhinne nodded. "The Department wanted – needed, really – information, and we had so little. He really drove a lot of that – he was . . . _very_ good_._ Dedicated, hardworking – good with the kids," she said with a bizarre little shrug. "Used to give them candy, had them call him 'Uncle Fausto'." She gave a sickly smile. "Loved twins. Really, really liked twins." She shuddered. "Like I say, he conducted a lot of . . . _research_."

"Experiments." Cornelius' voice was flat and final as slabs falling into a pit. The horror admitted, Rhinne nodded.

"We didn't know," she assured him. "I mean – the Division didn't know; I wasn't here for most of it. I came from Hong Tong on the transfer program back in '92, and I wasn't in a position to . . ." Cornelius' gold-flecked gaze didn't waver as her justifications stammered to silence. "There were rumors," she said, "and certainly more deaths than there should have been. The place got an evil reputation – people started calling it 'Judge's Mercy' – you know the term?"

Cornelius nodded. "Killing a fatally-wounded individual to spare him the pain," he glossed for Quartermain. "Not officially Department approved."

"They called Rindón 'Judge Death'," Rhinne explained. "The Division investigated, but I think people didn't want to face it – the information he was getting was useful, it was easier to . . ." She sighed. "It was easier for _us_ to ignore it, to keep sending . . . _divergences_ there." she said.

"You didn't know," said Cornelius, not unkindly.

"Maybe we should have done," admitted Rhinne. "We cut his funding, but didn't remove him. That didn't help, of course – maintenance went to Dok. There was a fire in the north wing, an outbreak of a drug-resistant pathogen in the south; officially, two of the levels are still quarantined but . . ." She shrugged. "I don't have much to work with."

"So what was the straw that broke the robomule's back?" asked Quartermain acidly. She seemed less-willing to dismissively forgive than Cornelius. "How come Uncle Fausto's not handing out his sweeties to all the little mutie boys and girls?"

"Cadet . . ." rumbled Cornelius warningly.

Quartermain dipped her head in apology, but Rhinne looked guilty too. "SJS stepped in," she explained. "Their chief – the guy before Cal – was injured, wound up in Mercy. He never came out. Rindón had him committed; psychosis. His shrinks worked on him, but . . ." She shrugged. "I think it did more harm than good."

"So SJS took an interest," said Cornelius. "Who led the investigation?"

Rhinne cocked her head, trying to remember. "I dunno," she said eventually. She jerked her thumb at her trailer. "I think I've got copies of the files in the clinic – they're restricted in the DB, but you can look if you think it's relevant. Anyway, yes – SJS got involved, conducted an investigation. It ended with a shootout – Rindón was killed."

"And Cal became head of SJS?" asked Quartermain. Rhinne nodded.

"He was Judge Timor's deputy," she said. "Goodman restructured the Council, moved MedDiv off and put SJS there. When Judge Tiberius was killed in '98, the Chief Judge made Cal DCJ – he'd done sterling work trying to sort out the mess."

"But Mercy didn't close?" asked Cornelius.

Rhinne rolled her eyes. "Like I said," she snorted bitterly, "someone's got an in with the heavy-bronze. Gibson probably – he's a golden boy. Wasn't he part of the Rose Garden class of '79?"

"So are two of my friends," said Cornelius shortly. "Good year."

Rhinne sighed. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're trying to help and I'm . . . bitter, I guess. I shouldn't take it out on you." She lifted her head and looked over at the statue and its grotesque decorations. Without conscious volition, the three of them had moved away from it. The blood was all-but washed away now, and the rain was slowing to a mere drizzle, a bracing dampness in the air. Puddles still splashed at their feet. "I should have taken you into the clinic," she apologized, "got you out of the rain. Let's go have a 'caf or something." Cornelius shook his head.

"Waiting for Cassie," he said. "Want her to see this. Anyway," he said with a wry grin and a glance at the two women, "I'm sure we've all got sins that could stand to be washed away."

As he spoke, the sky cracked overhead with a sonic boom as _Manta_ decelerated, the monstrous shield blocking out the smeared city light reflecting from the low-hanging gray clouds above. For an instant, it looked like a black hole punched through to the empty nothingness of space – a hole with the bright stars of running lights twinkling at the edges. Cornelius and Quartermain shielded their faces from the buffet of jetwash and steam as _Manta_ descended on its four columns of screaming exhaust, broiling hot gasses vaporizing the puddles and scorching the dampness from the air. Rhinne just stood, slack-jawed and amazed, as the massive craft settled with agonizing slowness on the plaza. The rear door clanked open and a solitary figure came down the ramp toward them, walking through and haloed by the back-lit fog and steam.

She was wearing a flimsy plastic rain cape, but she wasn't paying attention to it – the wind blew it open, the hem crumpled so it actually poured water into her collar. She didn't speak, instead stepping blindly forward, looking past the statue with its festoons of blood-drained meat hanging from it as if it were neither relevant or even _there_, her eyes focused on the building itself.

Cornelius broke the silence. "Cassie?" he asked uncertainly. She started and turned towards him, her blank face cycling into recognition. "This is Med-Judge Rhinne, she's the administrator here. We've got a multiple homicide – we think it's a psyker vigilante, killing perps. Rhinne was just bringing us up to speed on the med-center – we can . . ."

She gave a distant smile, her eyes faraway and focused on something far past him. "No need, John," she said. "I was a patient here."

**A/n : **As I said, this was inspired by Rhinne's excellent work in "Shielded" and her chapters set in Mercy Hospital. She was very open to my being inspired by this, and she helped with both the description of Judge Rhinne (she said she wanted to look like Michelle Yeoh – well, who doesn't? Woman is _gorgeous_!) and also some of the medical terminology. Rhinne's work is an inspiration, and our stories are NOT canonical for each other.

The reference to the "Rose Garden class" is something I am working on for "The Return of Rico" - Dredd and the Chief Judge talk about it. It refers (minor spoiler, but it's history / backstory) to the assault on the White House that deposed President Robert "Bad Bob" Booth. The idea is that something went down in the Rose Garden – big fight or something. Haven't decided what. People saved each others' lives there. Judge Gibson (also mentioned in "Highway Don't Care") is a comic character, a classmate of Dredd (both Joe &amp; Rico). Cornelius's other friend who is part of the '79 class is Tutor Novak (specifically said to be Dredd's classmate in "Aegis").

People familiar with the comics will _absolutely_ recognize where I am going here – and people familiar with mid-20th century European history will be able to see the parallels. I debated about trying to make it subtle . . . and then said "Drokk that". It's 'Dredd' – it's not a subtle medium. Names like "Fausto Rindón", "Judge Timor", "Judge Tiberius" (not to mention the explicit reference to "Judge Death"!) are hardly subtle things.

Anyway – comments, reviews etc. welcome! The box is right below – just type what you think!


	2. Engram I

**Prog 2 : Engram I**

It was raining in the plaza of Mercy Hospital as the justice-blue van with the twin red stripes pulled to a stop outside the main entrance. The medi-tek cursed as he stepped out of the driver's seat and into the downpour, hunching his head as if that would stop the rain from hitting him. "Drokking Weather Control malfunctions," he muttered. He tore open the back doors of the ambulance with unnecessary savagery. "Alright, you dweebs – get out. End of the line."

The interior of the med-wagon was run-down and dirty – a litter of empty cartons and discarded latex gloves collecting in the corners, bloody swabs and discarded needles rolling on the floor. Forceps, retractors and scalpels were stuffed into a jar of sterilizing solution – too-many for the container, and the fluid which should have been bright, translucent green was murky and brown with accumulated infection. This was medical care for welfare-recipients in Mega City One.

There was a man lying on the battered gurney, the torn vinyl cushions repaired with cloth-backed tape. Here and there, the edges had lifted, a sticky fuzz of dust, lint and discarded skin growing like mold. He was in his late-twenties or very-early-thirties, but looked older (even by the standards of the city's poor) with his lined face, prematurely gray hair, trembling hands and sallow, slack skin pockmarked with lesions and worrying moles. His breath was shallow, rasping in his chest. Perched on an upended crate by his side and holding his bony hand in both of hers was a bright-eyed girl with unruly rich blonde hair. She was around seven years old, with an eager innocence unusual among 'block children. The way she clung to her father suggested he had been shielding her from the city's horrors for quite some time. "C'mon," the medi-tek said impatiently, "hurry it up."

"My daddy's _sick_," the girl said petulantly. "You'll have to help him."

The medi-tek snorted. "You welfare-fleas are all the same," he sneered, "wanting something for nothing. Come on, hurry it up! I've got places to be!"

The girl's lip trembled and her butcher-blue eyes welled with tears. "He's _sick!_" she sobbed. "And it's raining out there – he'll catch a cold. You wouldn't let me bring his coat – mummy _never_ let him go out without a coat when it was raining."

Angry and shamed, and angered by his shame, the medi-tek sprang into the back of the van and grabbed her father, ignoring his semi-conscious cries of pain as he pulled him upright and swung his feet onto the floor. "Hey!" he said roughly, shaking the man, "wake up, you dweeb! End of the line – time to get out."

The patient heaved and vomited, bloody bile splattering to the floor of the ambulance. The medi-tek swore expansively and shoved him out of the van. He stumbled and tripped, falling flat on his face on the pavement. The girl gave an anguished cry and jumped out after him as the medi-tek laughed.

She struggled to lift him up, but she didn't have the strength in her skinny arms. "He's _sick!_" she wailed for the third time. "You're supposed to help him! You're a medi-tek – mummy always said . . ."

"Spug you, kid." The medi-tek swept his boot across the floor of the van, cleaning the worse of the spew out and sending droplets splattering in her face. "If your mummy cared so much, she'd be here, right?"

The girl hung her head, rainwater and tears dripping off her cheeks and nose. "She's dead," she whispered, as if admitting it for the first time. "She's dead – they took her to resyk yesterday."

The medi-tek jumped out of the van, shaking his head angrily as he slammed the doors shut. "Grud," he muttered, "just what this city needs – another welfare-brat sucking on the taxpayers' teat. Do us all a favor, kid," he said, looking down on her with a sneer, "you and your dad just stay here until the morning – cleaning-'bots can sweep you off the streets and straight to your mom, okay?"

The girl had pulled off her own flimsy jacket and lain it over her father in a gesture of pathetic protection, doing her best to drag him into the lee of the plinth of the massive statue outside the hospital door. It was a cold night, with hard winter rain, and she was already shivering. Her father was lying motionless, his body so far-gone it was no longer trying to stay alive. She looked up at the medi-tek with baleful, red-rimmed eyes. "You," she said decisively, "are a bad man."

The medi-tek chuckled, and then laughed the louder as she angrily screwed up her face and a cleft of concentration appeared between her eyebrows. And then he stopped, taking a staggering step backwards and grabbing at the side of the van to stop himself falling over. He clutched at his temple, blinking in puzzlement. He shook his head to clear it, contenting himself with slurring a final insult as got back behind the wheel. "Drokking welfare-brat."

The girl didn't watch the van drive uncertainly across the plaza, weaving erratically towards the highway. Instead, she stood up and examined the gigantic angel looming over her father and her. "He's got no clothes on," she blushed. "You can see _everything_." She walked around the plinth and looked up at the hospital, hundreds of windows burning with light and the reflection from the streetlamps off the gilded eagle blinding. She was frightened of the building – so large, so bright, towering over her. But this was a hospital, and her daddy was sick. She squared her narrow shoulders and walked towards the door.

Inside, the foyer was large and clean, brightly-lit and pleasant. She walked to the desk. "Excuse me, excuse me," she said politely, standing on her tip-toes to peer over the counter. "My daddy's outside – he's very sick."

The reception-'bot's visual sensors dilated and contracted as it studied her. "Can you describe his symptoms?" it asked.

"He's _sick_," she said succinctly. "He needs help."

The robot clicked and whirred. "Insufficient data to make diagnostic recommendation," it announced. "Need further input." The girl balled her fists and struck the edge of the counter.

"He's _sick_ and it's _raining_ and you're not _helping!_" she wailed. "Someone needs to help me carry him – I can't carry him on my own. If my mummy were here, she'd help," she sniffed decisively.

"Insufficient data to make . . ." the robot began again, but then fell to silence as a calm, drawling voice cut over it from behind and to the left.

"Stand down, 'bot." The voice belonged to a tall man wearing a white lab coat over justice-blue fatigues, a bronze shield on his belt. He had high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes, and wore his wavy dark brown hair slicked back off his face. "Don't be afraid," he told her. "Your daddy's ill?" The girl nodded, grasping his hand and tugging on it.

"He's outside," she explained. "He's very sick. Mummy died and they took her to resyk and daddy got worse and then the ambulance came and it brought us here because we didn't have insurance." She paused and cocked her head. "What's insurance?" she asked.

"Nothing you and your daddy need to worry about," he assured her. The girl didn't recognize the accent – TexCit – but it soothed her; a slow and comforting drawl, even with the hint of threat lurking just beyond her perception. He snapped his fingers at two men in green scrubs. "Gurney," he ordered. He let himself be led out of the building into the driving rain. "I'm Uncle Fausto," he said. "What's your name?"

"Cassandra," she said with a smile. "This is my daddy." The Med-Judge stood to one side while orderlies lifted him onto the gurney and then bent over him, examining him minutely. "Can you make him well?" she asked. He looked at her carefully for a moment and then flicked his head for the gurney to be pushed into the hospital.

"I can try," he promised her. He reached into a pocket of his labcoat and pulled out a bag. "Candy?" he asked.

She gave a pouting frown. "Mummy doesn't like me . . ." She collapsed into tears and she sobbed, burying her face in her hands. He went down on one knee in the rain to speak to her.

"I'm sure your mummy wouldn't mind," he told her. "It's the good stuff – real Uncle Ump's." He pushed the bag towards her. "Just one piece, you've had a bad day."

She took a big chunk and stuffed it into her mouth, her little jaws working on it. "Thank you, Sir," she said, her voice muffled around the candy.

"Call me Uncle Fausto," he reminded her, "and you're welcome. C'mon," he said, standing and putting a hand on her shoulder, "let's get you inside. Some dry clothes, a good meal." They took a couple of steps towards the hospital entrance, but then she turned abruptly back.

"Are you going to get him some clothes?" she asked, pointing at the angel. "You can see his bum. And his . . . daddy-parts," she whispered, gleefully scandalized.

He laughed. "That's the Angel of Mercy, Cassandra," he said. "Ain't no secrets in Mercy."

She looked puzzled and might have said more, but there was a sudden cacophony from the highway – a squeal of brakes on wet-tarmac, a rending crash of steel-on-steel, screams and the tinkle of falling glass. The Med-Judge spun, looking towards the accident, lifting his wrist to his mouth. "RTA east side of the plaza!" he yelled. "Get inside," he told her, starting towards the wrecked ambulance.

"He was a bad man," Cassandra said flatly. "He was mean to my daddy."

The Judge stopped and turned, letting the orderlies sprint past him. "What?" he asked, walking back toward her. "The driver of the med-wagon? He was . . . a bad man?" She nodded.

"He was mean," she explained. "I . . . hit him."

Once again, he knelt before her, the rain cascading down his face and dripping off her shivering body. "You hit him," he repeated. "With your hand?" She bit her lip and hung her head. "It's alright," he assured her, "you can tell me."

She shook her head. "No . . ." she said slowly.

He stood, catching the arm of a sprinting medic. "The driver of the ambulance," he ordered, "I want him for an autopsy." The medic nodded, and then something occurred to him.

"And if he's not dead, Med-Judge Rindón?"

Rindón shrugged. "I still want to conduct the autopsy," he said shortly. He gave a bloodless smile and let the medic go, moving his hand back to Cassandra's shoulder. "Let's get inside," he said, "and we can have a little talk."

**A/n :** Apropos of nothing, but the face and voice of Med-Judge Rindón are imagined to be Matthew McConaughey, particularly in his recent series of car adverts. That slow, heavy-lidded Texan drawl was somehow soothing and threatening at the same time.

A note on Anderson's age in this flashback as well as Judicial recruitment practices in my fanon; the movie doesn't really give details of the training of Judges, other than to mention the Academy, the notion of passing marks, and the fact orphans are given an aptitude test at age 9. The comics have a lot more explicit detail – Cadets are recruited at 5, have 15 years training, and must pass a field assessment with a senior Judge.

I think the dialog in the movie can support the comics canon (which is what I have gone with for my fanon, as have most other authors) but I actually tend to think, within the movie, Judges are recruited at age 9 (when "as is usual with orphans [Anderson] was given a Judge aptitude test") and graduate at 21 (Anderson's age in the movie). I also think the movie implies the field assessment is _not_ standard practice and was a special thing offered Anderson by the Chief Judge.

Obviously, my fanon more closely follows the comics – Cadet induction at 5, graduation from the Academy and Street Assessment (for ESE – _Engage_, _S_entence, _E_xecute, i.e. 'Street-rated' – officers) at 20. Exceptional Judges (such as Joe &amp; Rico Dredd, and presumably the rest of what I called "The Rose Garden Class") might graduate earlier. Other Judges (such as Anderson and other late inductions) might get "kept back" a year (hence her graduation at 21 – even allowing for an extra year of study, her "borderline" grades and "marginal fail" might be explained by the fact she has 3 years less experience than everyone else). Cornelius specifically mentions Tutor Pepper's curriculum for "late inductions" and Quartermain identifies herself as a "late induction" (she was likely inducted at 13 or 14) in "Shakedown the Dream" - that story contains various hints at recruitment and training practices.

So, it is possible to harmonize my fanon with the dialog in the movie – even though I think the implication is different (the Chief Judge mentions Anderson's age _because it is unusual_ she isn't 20, and her asking / ordering him to give her an Assessment sounds out of place because it is – she didn't graduate from the Academy). This dialog from the movie;

"_. . . born in a block 100 meters from the radiation boundary wall. At age 7, she lost both her parents to residual fall-out cancer. As is usual with orphans she was given a Judge aptitude test at age 9. It classified her as unsuitable but she was entered into the Academy on special instruction. In the Academy, her record was never better than borderline . . ."_

needs to be harmonized with my fanon and this story's continuity. Firstly, her father is still alive when she is 7 (although he is terminally ill). Secondly, she was given the aptitude test at 9 – two years after she was orphaned. In a system where Judges are recruited at 9, that makes sense, but not in one where they are recruited (and presumably aptitude can be determined) at 5.

I harmonize this by the simple expedient of saying the Chief Judge got it wrong and isn't speaking clearly. Anderson lost one parent when she was 7, the other when she was 9 (this isn't a spoiler – it is going to be explicitly stated next chapter). Giving the aptitude test _to orphans_ is usual, and Anderson received it at age 9 (rather than giving the aptitude test to orphans at 9 is usual) and the Chief Judge isn't intimately familiar with her history.

So, a minor detail which I have clearly thought too-much about! I am considering writing some notes / an essay on my fanon details and chronology and hosting it on DeviantArt or somewhere. Let me know if any of you are interested – and don't forget to review! Box is right there!


	3. Examination

**Prog 3 : Examination**

"I don't know how she can sleep."

Cornelius looked across the desk at Anderson, lifting his eyes from the report in front of him. He glanced over his shoulder – Quartermain was curled up like a kitten in the corner of the clinic, her breathing soft and even despite her being squished in an uncomfortable-looking chair. "She's just a kid," he said, "they've got joints made of boing at that age. And she had a tough shift." He turned back to Anderson, pointing with his chin at the cup in her hand. "Also," he chided, "she's not sucking down 'caf. Is it even any good?"

Anderson swallowed a mouthful and grimaced. "Nope," she said decisively, standing up to get more.

Despite her reminiscing fascination with Mercy, Anderson hadn't objected when Rhinne led them into her clinic. Betancourt had remained onboard _Manta_; the plaza was deserted, the fear of the Angel of Mercy's wrath keeping the streets clear, and the aircraft had sophisticated automated defensive countermeasures – but the pilot was more comfortable staying with his plane. The trailer was intended to serve as a temporary field-station, a triage node or rear-line support for a 'block-war pacification. Five years of permanent temporary assignment had taken its toll; it was run-down, overused and underfunded. The floor was scuffed, paint worn off cabinets, many of the medical supplies bought locally rather than sourced from MedDiv. That effort to make do with nothing spoke well to Rhinne's dedication to her patients and duty, as did the clinic's cleanliness – it was spotless, surfaces scoured and bleached and scalded. The air was bright with an antiseptic tang, everything squared away, neat and well-ordered – an antidote to the grim depression of Mercy.

Rhinne had bustled around, finding them chairs, clearing paperwork off her desk so Anderson could sit there and putting a pot of 'caf on to perk. She'd unlocked the bottom drawer of a file cabinet and pulled out a stack of folders. Quartermain had touched them, gingerly, as if they were dirty bandages. Rhinne had apologized; only hardcopies were available – her computer was old and unreliable, and with the overspill from the deadzone the uplink to J-Dept DBs was unpredictable. The three members of PsiDiv had shared a resigned look and settled down and gone old-school on the files.

Rhinne would have perhaps helped them, but it was barely a minute later her comm bleeped; an emergency call. She'd smiled apologetically, tossing the keys to the file cabinet and drawers on the surface of the desk as she left, the noise of her bike fading into the silence of the night.

That had been hours ago. Rhinne hadn't returned, and Quartermain had lain down for 'just a catnap, boss – five minutes, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die!' at around midnight. Anderson looked at her – sleeping soundly, soft snores catching in her nose and sinuses, her beautiful face peaceful and serene – and shook her head in wonder. "I meant with all this," she said. She sat back down; dozens of sheets of paper were scattered on the desk in front of her, each a report on unimaginable horror reduced to terse, formal, judicial prose. "After what happened here – what we _let_ happen . . ."

"We were just Cadets, Cassie," Cornelius reminded her. "We didn't know it was happening."

"The Department _did_," she corrected him. "And we did _nothing_ – because it was _useful_." She gestured at the files, grabbed one seemingly at random. "Look at this!" she exclaimed. "Have you _seen_ what he did? He took twins and . . ."

Cornelius caught her hands, stilling them and taking the document from her. Deliberately, he shuffled the papers together into a single neat stack and placed them face down on the table. "Stop it," he told her. "Enough. You're torturing yourself, and for no reason. You were a Cadet – a _child_. You didn't _know_. You would _never_ have let this happen."

She bent her neck, the tangles of her rich blonde hair falling forward to hide her face. She'd stripped off her plates and fatigue jacket, looking small and vulnerable in a black tank top. The firm muscles of her arms seemed at odds with the gentle softness of her skin. She shook her head. "I'm sure that's what MedDiv thought," she whispered. "Until it came down to the bronze and it was _useful_ and they turned a blind eye to it. You heard Rhinne."

"I did," said Cornelius, "and I also know she's tormented by her failure – even though there was _nothing_ she could have done either. The people responsible were punished – Rindón was killed, others were executed or went to Aspen or the 'cubes. It's all here." He lifted a bulky file whose cover was stamped with the skull-eagle of SJS. "If you want to read _anything_, read this. There's _justice_ here – there's no justice in any of the other spug."

He couldn't see, hidden behind the tumbled fringe of her hair, but he was certain her butcher-blue eyes were misting with tears. "They were just like me," she whispered. "Muties, like me. And he experimented on them, and tortured them, and I didn't . . ."

Cornelius' voice was infuriatingly calm. "You. Didn't. Know," he articulated slowly, as if explaining something to a moron.

She crashed a naked hand down on the desk, the gasoline-fire of her eyes ablaze, drops of 'caf splashing upwards and splattering the reports. "I drokking well _should_ have known!" she snapped. "I was _there_! I was a patient here! And he . . . he . . ."

Very carefully, Cornelius sank down in his chair, slumping his shoulders and lowering his head so he appeared as unthreatening as six-foot-four of solid muscle, bone and bronze could appear. "What did he do?" he asked softly.

Her lip trembled as she struggled to answer. "Nothing," she eventually managed. "He didn't do anything to me. He was . . . he was _kind_ to me. Oh, he studied me – I know that now – but that was games and tests; they were _fun!_ But he treated me so well. He . . . he _spared_ me, John," she whispered. "Why?"

"You were there early on," said Cornelius. "Shortly after he took over – most of these cases are later. Maybe he only started . . ."

"That doesn't mean _anything!_" she exclaimed. "We only have these reports because they were still _alive_ when SJS came in; we've got _no idea_ how many people he killed or mutilated or tortured in the early years." She shook her head. "I should have known," she repeated.

"When did you find out he hurt others?" Cornelius asked.

She seemed to consider. "Rumors about Mercy started circulating when I was a teenager – Jackie's age, or so?" she guessed. "I don't think I believed it – I didn't _want_ to believe it," she corrected herself. "But when SJS closed Mercy, there was no way to deny it."

"You had to come to terms with that," realized Cornelius. "Had to accept Uncle Fausto had done those things."

"Don't call him that!" she exclaimed with a vehemence that surprised them both. "Don't call him that – his name's _Med-Judge Rindón_."

Cornelius leaned back in his chair, carefully examining his anguish-stricken partner. "Not just Rindón?" he asked.

"The Department _let him do it_," she hissed. "It was _useful_. _I_ was useful."

"You still are," pointed out Cornelius.

The gasoline-fire of her eyes narrowed to a oxyacetylene torch. "Is that _all_ I am?" she asked.

"Not to me," he said easily. His compassion was surprising, refreshing and calming as a sudden shower of spring rain. The plasteen-cutting heat in her eyes sank to a merely-burning flame. "It tarnished the bronze for you, didn't it?" he asked.

"It did," she admitted. "I was eighteen, at the Academy, when Mercy closed. I was spending a lot of my time practicing, honing my skills – but everything I was learning, all the information the doctors were using was based on Rindón's experiments." She shuddered, her naked arms goose-bumping even though it wasn't cold. "That was really difficult for me; facing it, acknowledging a _Judge_, someone I _cared_ about and who cared about _me,_ had done those things to people like me – but left me alone. And I – and the Department – were _benefiting_ from their suffering." She clenched her fist and gritted her teeth. "We _still_ use his research!" she exclaimed. "I use it to teach _Jackie_!"

"You can't undo what was done, Cassie," Cornelius. "Would you have their suffering mean nothing?"

She screwed up her face in painful surrender. "I know!" she moaned. "I know – don't you think I've been _over_ this? But it doesn't make it any easier. Why, John?" she asked plaintively. "Why _me_? Why was he kind to me? He treated me like . . ." She hung her head, finally whispering, "Like a _daughter_."

Cornelius didn't ask the horrible yet inevitable follow-up question, but he could not keep himself from thinking it. "I guess," she answered. "I didn't really see my dad after he was admitted – he was very sick. I don't remember it clearly."

"What _do_ you remember?" Cornelius asked.

She sighed, her face bent over the 'caf cradled in her hands, the steam rising from it like the soup bowl of an orphan. "Not much," she said apologetically. "But, then again – how much _do_ we remember? From when we that young, I mean."

He cast his own mind back. "I know I was at the Academy," he said, "but . . . you're right. I don't remember, but I don't have to – I have the transcripts."

She smiled. "Top of the class already, I'll bet?" He blushed modestly, the rich olive of his cheeks darkening beneath the blue-gray cast of five-o'clock-plus-eight-hours shadow. Discomforted by her praise, he nervously stood and paced the small room.

"Hmm, maybe," he admitted. "Kim had noticed me by then, I think – she was already mentoring me pretty closely. She wasn't Vice-Principal, of course – just one of the hand-to-hand instructors."

Despite herself, Anderson shuddered. "She was my _nemesis_," she admitted. "Did you know that? She didn't like me."

"Tutor can't afford to like his students," Cornelius muttered; it was brutal irony he was tucking a pillow under Quartermain's head so she didn't get a cricked neck at that _exact_ moment. "But you two get along well enough now, right?" he asked, a little nervously.

She nodded. "Yeah, we do – about a year and a half ago we . . . well," she said with a slightly-sickly smile, "that's classified. But, we straightened some things out. It wasn't easy there, for a while – not even after I passed the assessment."

"Dredd passed you. They were classmates . . ." Cornelius paused for a moment as he considered the implications of the word ". . . _friends_. Surely . . . ?" Anderson shook her head.

"She wasn't happy about it – couldn't disagree with the pass, of course, but she'd been against giving me the assessment in the first place. 'A fail is a fail', she said."

Cornelius shrugged. "We're all wrong sometimes," he said shortly. "Who argued _for_ you getting an assessment? Who went up against Kim?"

Anderson smiled. "Pepper," she said softly.

"_Tom?_" Cornelius asked incredulously. Anderson threw up her hands in exasperation.

"You call them by their first names!" she exclaimed.

"I attended faculty meetings," he explained. "But, really, _Pepper_?"

"Yeah, Pepper!" She glared at him. "There some reason it shouldn't be?"

Cornelius gawped. "No, no reason at all," he stammered. "It's just that . . . well, he always seemed so . . ."

"Peppery?" asked Anderson archly.

"Well, _yeah_," admitted Cornelius. "You have to admit, he wasn't friendly with Cadets – senior Vice-Principal, always very focused. The rest of the Tutors were . . ."

"Pepper's okay," she said decisively. "He was _my_ mentor, looked out for me, said I should get an assessment. It was his special instruction that inducted me – he was the one who rescued me from Mercy."

Cornelius sat back down and looked at her carefully. "'Rescued'?" he repeated. "Are you saying that because of what you learned later, or . . . ?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe? Or . . ." She groaned in frustration, scrubbing her face with her hands. "I went there when I was seven," she began, fiercely interrogating herself. "My mother had just died, and my father went there for treatment." Her eyes were faraway as they looked blindly into the corner of the room and back through the years. "He died a year or so later – must have been more than a year," she realized, "because I remember two birthdays there." She turned to him, her eyes focusing with a smile. "Cake," she said. "Balloons and lemonade and . . ." She shook her head and plowed on. "I remember him dying, John. I saw it happen – it's vague and it's blurry and it's not clear, but I remember him struggling in pain, gasping for breath, crying out my name . . ." She bit her lip to stop the tears as she hung her head and closed her eyes, only opening them when his concern enveloped her mind.

His hand touched hers after she felt his compassion; the contrast of her slender, naked fingers with their individual whorls and scars and fortune-teller's lines with his hand – massive, uniform, powerful, hidden behind an armored glove – made her feel like a newly-inducted Cadet again. She wanted to pull her hand away from the iron fist of the Judges, to coil her fingers reflectively inside themselves, to protect her individuality from the crushing oppression of her identity the Academy absolutely had to be.

Cornelius wasn't psychic, but perhaps she was broadcasting and he was certainly perceptive. He didn't hold on to her hand, but neither did she pull it away. She took his in both of hers and turned it over, minutely examining the glove. The leather was scratched and scuffed, the resin scab on the thumb cracked, a seam split over a knuckle. "You should let me fix it," she said softly. "I'm a dab hand with a needle and thread."

He smiled – she was, it was true, an excellent seamstress and had patched together more than one ruined uniform expertly. But it always made him feel a little guilty to see her at the table in the squad room, bent over and working industriously on his gear. "Who taught you that?" he asked.

She smiled despite herself. "Not Pepper," she assured him. As if she realized what she was doing, she let go of his hand and clutched her 'caf once more.

"So," said Cornelius, his mind running through the Academy's induction procedures. "You were an orphan at nine, eligible to take the aptitude tests. You took them . . ."

"And failed," she reminded with him with a wry grin.

"But Tom inducted you on special instruction." She nodded.

"Right." She set her narrow chin on her fists and looked pensive. "I always assumed it was because of my abilities, but now . . ."

"Maybe he did rescue you," said Cornelius, "and you just don't remember."

There was silence in the clinic for a full minute, broken only by Quartermain's sleeping susurrations. "Well," she said, a little too-brightly, "this case is more pressing than my childhood traumas."

"Cassie . . ." began Cornelius.

"No, that wasn't fair of me," she admitted. "Thank you – it helps just to talk it through, to know you're there for me. But we have a case, and if there are answers," she said, tapping her temple, "they're not in here, there in there." She pointed towards the hospital building. "That's where we'll find our perps."

Cornelius knew her focusing on the case was her way of dealing with her own issues, and that there was nothing to be gained by resisting her. "What do you think this is?" he asked. "A psyker vigilante?"

She nodded. "Probably they're former patients here," she said. "A lot of them escaped when SJS took down Rindón – some were recaptured, others were probably killed, but I'm sure some survived. And where else would they go?"

He noticed she spoke in the plural. "You think we're looking at more than one perp?" he asked.

"The trauma's severe," she explained, "and multiple victims – that's some serious psychic muscle. And the physical injuries as well – a group makes more sense. If they were cast adrift when the hospital closed, they might very well band together. If the local gangs were preying on them, they might fight back."

"It's how most vigilantes start," agreed Cornelius. "Can you psynse anything, inside the hospital?"

Anderson smiled. "You know the term," she said, touched. He shrugged.

"I do read the reports," he said. "Anything?"

Her eyes defocused for a few moments, her attention reaching through the night. She shook her head as she pulled her mind back into it. "No, nothing – it's . . . odd. There are psychic resonances here – echoes of what happened, thoughts and feelings worn into reality. Even a blunt . . ." She blushed, correcting herself. "I mean, a non-psi, can pick up on them; it's why people don't like to come here, why the plaza's deserted. But the hospital itself is silent, cold, dark – like a grave."

Cornelius didn't seem as concerned as her. "Must be no-one inside," he said.

"No," she said firmly. "It's _too_ quiet." She grasped for a metaphor he would understand. "It's like going into a crime scene and everything's neat and tidy and squared away, and when forensics sweep it there's nothing – no prints, no DNA, nothing."

"It's been staged," Cornelius realized. "So, what?" he asked. "We go inside to look?" She nodded. "Tomorrow morning then. We can't start too late – I don't want to be in there at night."

She smirked. "You, John? Afraid of the dark?"

He shook his head. "It's not that," he explained, "it's a dead zone. Lamps and nightvision won't work – I want as much daylight as possible." He stood up. "Come on," he said, "let's get out of here – back to _Aegis_, catch some Zs. You probably don't want to finish that," he suggested. "You'll be tossing and turning all night."

Very deliberately, she took a long pull at the 'caf. "You and Jackie go back," she said. "You've had a busy day, I was lazing at HOJ in meetings for most of it. I'll stay here."

He narrowed his eyes. "Why?" he asked bluntly. "What good would it do? Cassie, if we're going in there tomorrow, I need you sharp. We don't know what's inside."

"But maybe we can," she said. "I'll get some sleep – I promise. But I want to have it here. When I'm asleep," she explained, "my consciousness isn't in the way. I might be able to psynse something in my dreams, something that's useful to us, give us an idea of what we're blundering into."

Cornelius considered – it _sounded_ reasonable; Quartermain did – as she said – some of her best work when she didn't mean to, and maybe Anderson was the same. Still, he wasn't comfortable with her spending the night alone. "Alright," he said reluctantly, "but I'm staying with you – just in case."

She didn't agree. "In case what?" she asked. "The door and windows are alarmed – you'd either be staying awake all night and then _you're_ not sharp, or you're dozing in an uncomfortable chair – _your_ joints aren't made of boing," she added. "Give me the keys to your bike and take the other one back to _Aegis_ – that way, I'll have transport." He didn't look convinced, opening his mouth to argue. She lifted her hand to forestall any further objections. "I won't be here all night," she assured him. He still didn't look convinced. "Do you want me to make it an order?" she asked with a grin, but there was bronze behind it.

"No, Ma'am," he said decisively.

She smiled, pleased at her victory, and picked up her gauntlet, tapping it against his forearm to transfer the digital keys from one lawscreen to another. "_Aegis_ is docked at HOJ – I'll drive back when I've got what I need," she promised. "We can talk tactics over breakfast." He nodded.

"I'll pull the blueprints, and see if anyone can spare some backup, although I doubt they can," he said grimly. "Department's still stretched after Sumner and the riots, and sector nine don't want anything to do with it. Don't stay up to late," he advised, "and quit reading that spug – it'll give you nightmares."

She gave a wan smile and a one-shouldered shrug. "Maybe it needs to," she said. "Isn't fear the beginning of wisdom?" He gave a brief, slightly-nervous smile. He turned and reached for Quartermain's shoulder, intending to shake her awake, but before he could touch her she stirred, stretching like a cat.

"I'm up," she yawned.

"You scare the Dok out of me sometimes, Jackie," Cornelius said with feeling. "Come on, we're going back to _Aegis_ – Cassie's going to stay here and see if she can't dream her way to an answer." It sounded ridiculous to his ears when he said it, but Quartermain merely nodded judiciously, flexing her neck and pushing her hand under her collar to massage her trapezius muscle.

Anderson watched them leave, listening for the firing of _Manta_'s engines and the gradually fading roar as the aircraft lifted off. She gave it a full minute after she could no longer hear it and then slunk to the window, surreptitiously parting the blinds and peering through as if it might have, somehow, stealthily come back. Save for a dry patch of scorched pavement where _Manta_ had been sitting, there was no sign of it. She peered left and right, glancing briefly at the statue and quickly looking – almost guiltily – away, and then ducked back from the window.

Sitting at the desk, she picked up Rhinne's keys and started to go methodically though the drawers.

oOo

Anderson stirred awake when the door opened, screwing her eyes up against the light Rhinne flicked on as she entered. "Oh, sorry!" she exclaimed as the psi sat up on the fold-out cot, the silvery shimmer of the emergency blanket sliding off her shoulders. Anderson had taken off her boots, tank top and fatigue pants to sleep and was naked except for a black elastane bra and briefs.

"'S'okay," she muttered, rubbing her eyes. "What time is it?" Rhinne glanced at her chronometer.

"Just after two," she said.

"Hmm," said Anderson, scrubbing a hand through her hair. "I only put my head down fifteen minutes ago – how'd it go?"

"Routine," Rhinne said shortly – Anderson didn't need to be a psi to know that meant at least one person was dead who didn't need to be. The Med-Judge unbuckled her belt and hung it on a hook, taking her lawgiver from the holster and stripping the magazine from it. She opened the desk drawer and locked the gun and shells inside. "You?"

"It makes depressing reading," Anderson said. "We're going in tomorrow, when it gets light – see if we can't find some answers."

Rhinne might have said something – expressed sympathy, amazement, admiration, offered to go with them, 'rather you than me' – but then her communicator beeped urgently. "Drokk it all to spugging stomm," she muttered under her breath. She read the report on her lawscreen and her shoulders slumped.

"You want me to come with you?" asked Anderson. Rhinne shook her head, strapping on her belt once more.

"If you're going into Mercy tomorrow, you need your sleep," she said decisively. She unlocked the drawer and pulled out her lawgiver, loading it and checking the action before holstering it. She paused, sorting through the things in the drawer. "Odd," she remarked, "I thought I had three prescription pads."

A studied expression of disinterest on her face, Anderson reached out, pressing a suggestion and feeling of indifference into the surface of the Med-Judge's mind. "Maybe you just miscounted?" she offered out loud.

"I guess I must have just miscounted," Rhinne said with an indifferent shrug. She closed the drawer and locked it. "Don't wait up," she said as she left.

"Good luck," Anderson said to her departing back, lying back down on the cot and pulling the blanket up to her shoulders. The headlamps from Rhinne's lawmaster played across the windows of the clinic as she pulled away and Anderson rolled over on her side, turning away from the glare. She shuffled and groped, settling the little book more comfortably inside her bra, as she slipped back into slumber, faint guilt nagging at her amid the hope she would dream.

**A/n :** Another chapter – there is a relatively slow build here for this story, and there is backstory which needs to be conveyed.

A minor note on terminology – I have used the word "lawscreen" to refer to the gauntlet computers the Judges wear. I took this from the excellent "Judicial Affairs" story on this site – it's a great story, and I thought the name was better than "gauntlet computer". I've actually gone through and updated some chapters in older stories as well with this.

Anyway – review box is right there! How about leaving a review? Pretty please with sugar (or J-Dept approved sweetener, at least) on top?


	4. Engram II

**Prog 4 : Engram II**

Cassandra wiggled her toes in the thick felted-plasteen socks as she swung her legs back and forth. She was sitting at a desk bigger than their dining table at home, eating the munceburger carefully so she didn't get grease-stains on the chunky sweater. Like the chair, it was too big for her – she pressed her chin to the sleeves and shoved them up her arms rather than use her sticky fingers.

Uncle Fausto had whisked her and her daddy into an elevator and then along the corridors of the big, scary hospital, through door after door. Everything was clean and bright, all the lights working, the walls free of graffiti and with no trash on the floor. She'd held on to her daddy's hand as he was wheeled along, trotting beside the gurney. After a few twists and turns and when she was thoroughly lost, a set of doors in front of her had abruptly opened and she'd jumped, expecting a gang of slicers or tappers to rush through and mug her.

Uncle Fausto had smiled down at her, holding the hand she'd instinctively grabbed his with, as a scrubs-clad team rushed along the corridor. "You're safe here," he'd promised her. "Nothing is going to hurt you." She'd nodded and squeezed his hand as he gave curt instructions to his medical team. They'd pushed her daddy's stretcher through a set of double doors which swung shut behind him, and she'd started forward with a little cry but Uncle Fausto had shook his head and led her away. "Come on, Cassandra," he'd said, "let's get you cleaned up. Your daddy will be just fine with them – I promise. Let them take of him. His big girl should worry about herself."

A nurse had helped her undress and take a shower – a long one, with hot water and no timer, and a funny-smelling soap the nurse called 'sandalwood'. A robot had weighed and measured her and then the nurse had peered down her throat and ears and shone a bright light into her eyes and hit her in the knee with a little hammer that made her leg jump without her wanting it to. She'd giggled and then bit her lip and tried not to cry as the nurse drew blood into a syringe and put a sticky bandage with a picture of a cartoon mouse on it on her arm.

The nurse had told her she was a brave girl and given her clothes to wear – clean clothes, warm clothes, that weren't patched or torn or worn thin. They were big on her and the nurse had said she was sorry, that she would get different ones, but Cassandra had shaken her head. "It's better like this," she'd explained. "That way, I can grow into them and you can use the scratch to pay the shakedowners." It had taken the nurse a moment to process the street slang, and another to overcome the shock at hearing it come so casually from a child's mouth, and then she'd shaken her head and – once again – told her she was a brave girl, but this time she said she was poor as well and Cassandra had nodded and agreed but said her daddy was always trying to get a job.

The nurse had cried then, and Cassandra wondered what she'd done wrong – but the nurse wouldn't tell her and had instead ushered her along corridors and through doors to the big fancy office with the windows overlooking the plaza and the funny pictures of the insides of people on the walls. A robot had brought a munceburger – a big one, big as her _head_ with crispy facon and drippy yellow cheeze – and a plate of tatty-fries with a whole _bottle_ of redsauce. "All for me?" Cassandra had asked in a small, awed voice, and the nurse had cried anew and fled the room, leaving Cassandra to wonder about grownups and their silliness.

But not for long – because she was hungry and the burger was good. She poured redsauce all over the 'fries and ate them with her fingers; her mummy would have frowned at her for doing that, but her daddy would have encouraged her, stealing a 'fry or two himself. She frowned herself – she had plenty of 'fries, more than she needed. She wondered if her daddy was getting anything to eat.

The door behind her opened and she jumped in her chair, grabbing at the desk and smearing grease and redsauce on the vat-grown leather. Rindón walked in – he had a red-and-white carton in one hand and two blue cans in the other. "Enjoying your burger?" he asked. He put a can in front of her – it was cold, drops of water condensing on the gleaming surface, beading amid the red-white-and-blue logo – cracking the tab and pouring frothing, black-brown soda into a glass. "The nutritionists say it's bad for your teeth – and they're right," he said, "but I think I know a brave girl who's earned it."

He moved around the desk and sat down opposite her, undoing the carton so it opened into a flat cardboard plate. The food inside was a tangled mass of long white noodles slathered in a shiny brown sauce, hot wraiths of steam rising from the pile. As Cassandra watched, he touched his forehead, chest and then each shoulder with his first two fingers and bowed his head briefly in some ritual she didn't recognize. He peeled the sanitary paper from a pair of chopsticks and started to eat. He looked up when he noticed she wasn't drinking. "Is this real Pepsi?" she asked softly. He nodded. She sipped judiciously. "Never had the real stuff," she admitted. She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as she realized what she'd admitted. "I mean . . ."

He laughed. "It's alright, Cassandra." She frowned – he was talking with his mouth full, chewing noisily, drips of sauce on his chin; mummy wouldn't have approved. "Buying a knock-off might be illegal but . . . well, funding the Cola Wars is probably worse. Then again," he considered, "keeps me busy, I guess." He opened his can and held it out to her; it took her a moment to understand the gesture and clink her drink against his. "Cheers," he said, taking a sip. There was silence for a few moments, punctuated by the oily slurp of noodles and the hiss of flattening cola.

"Is daddy going to get well?" she asked plaintively. He paused, sighing heavily, and meditatively tapped his chopsticks against the table. He wiped his lips and chin with a napkin before speaking.

"Well," he said, "I'm not going to lie to you. Your daddy's very sick, he's got a very bad disease, called cancer. It's metastasized – that means it's spread all through him. It's serious."

Crystal tears beaded in her eyes and she angrily wiped them away with her sleeve. "Can you make him better?" she asked.

Rindón smiled. "We can try," he said. "We see a lot of people will cancer, people your parents' age, living near the edge of the city. We do pretty well with it."

"Can I see him?" she asked. Rindón shook his head.

"He's sleeping," he explained, "and he needs his rest. Maybe you can see him tomorrow. A lot of the treatments will be tough on him – you're going to have to be strong for him. Can you do that, Cassandra?" he asked. "Can you be strong for your daddy?"

She nodded. "I can't pay you very much," she said apologetically. "I've got Oinky, but daddy had to take money out of him to pay the surveillance tax. You can have my allowance each month, though," she promised. Rindón laughed softly. "I mean it!" she exclaimed.

"I'm sure you do," he said, "but you don't need to worry about that. Uncle Fausto'll take care of everything – and I'll be sure to put some pennies in Oinky for you." Embarrassed by his generosity, she mumbled her kindness around a mouthful of munce. "How's the burger?" he asked.

She swallowed thickly. "It's very good, thank you," she said politely. She looked at the mess on his plate. "What are you eating?" she asked.

He dug into it with his chopsticks, lifting a steaming knot of noodles. "Curry," he said shortly. He held it out to her. "Wanna try it?"

She screwed her face up. "It looks like _worms_," she said. He laughed and jiggled the chopsticks so the noddles danced and wriggled. "Is it nice?" she asked, curiously.

He shrugged. "I like it," he said shortly. "Won't know 'till you try."

She considered briefly and then nodded, holding her mouth open and letting him guide it in. Loose noodles straggled and dripped sauce on her chin as she closed her lips around the chopsticks. She chewed judiciously for a few moments and then beamed, swallowing eagerly. "It's all . . . _tingly_!" she exclaimed. "Tingly on my tongue!"

He laughed and spun the plate towards her, pulling another set of chopsticks from the drawer. "Here," he said, "let's share." He peeled the paper from and separated the chopsticks, showing her how to hold them. Her little fingers clumsy, she struggled at first but soon – with a cleft of concentration appearing between her eyes – managed well enough. He smiled benevolently at her, slurping a thick rope of noodles into his mouth. "See?" he told her. "You're getting the hang of it."

She frowned. "You shouldn't talk with your mouth full," she chided. "And you shouldn't slurp – it's not nice."

He laughed again – she was coming to like the sound of his laugh; it didn't frighten her like it had at first. It reminded her of when her daddy had laughed – it seemed so long ago, when he'd had time to play and wasn't in pain so he wasn't angry with her when she tried to climb on his back for a ride. "But slurping's the way you do it," he explained.

She considered this for a second and then carefully picked up one end of a long noodle, pursing her lips around it and sucking it in, the other end whipping like the tail of a radsnake, splattering sauce all over her cheeks and chin. She laughed and clapped her hands with glee – this was _so much_ more fun than eating with her daddy.

"So," said Rindón. "The bad man, who was mean to you and your daddy, the one you hit? He crashed his van."

She blanched. "Is he alright?" she asked. "I didn't mean to . . ."

"I've got him . . . under observation," he explained. "That means I'm taking a good look at him. But you don't worry – he was mean to you, he was a bad man. I'm more interested in you, Cassandra – you're a special girl."

She beamed. "Daddy always said I was _his_ special girl," she told him.

"Umm-hmm." Rindón nodded. "And now you can be my special girl, if you like. Would you like that, Cassandra? There are lots of special children, who grew up near the boundary wall – but none of them are quite as special as you."

"We lived in Union City 'block," she volunteered. "Right next to the wall – but it's broken there."

"That's on the banks of the Helson River, right?" Rindón asked. "Radhattan's just on the other side." She looked apologetically blank. "Can you be my special girl, Cassandra?" he asked again. "We can play some games."

She stuffed a big heap of noodles into her mouth and chewed noisy, her cheeks bulging. "What kind of games?" she asked.

"Oh," said Rindón, "really fun ones – I promise."

**A/n :** Anderson's liking for noodles comes from Khayr's stories (which are excellent) and I have made it part of my fanon. But here we see the darker side of that passion – maybe she's forgotten where she got her taste for curry from? Perceptive readers will also notice a particular scent she wears – and _very_ perceptive readers might notice a connection between Anderson and a previous character (which might become important in later stories!)

Reviews very eagerly accepted!


	5. Working Out

**Prog 5 : Working Out**

Quartermain finished drying herself and wrapped the towel around her, twisting a knot over her sternum to secure it in place. Finger-combing the crimson tangles out of her damp hair, she padded out of the washroom and along the short corridor into the squad room. The latticework deckplates were a wincing discomfort on her bare feet, the airship's recirculated air cool on her naked legs. The squad room was empty and the door in the forward bulkhead closed. "Brufen?" she called. "Are you and Nick on the bridge?" There was an affirmative noise. Satisfied, Quartermain dropped the towel and hung it over the open door of her locker to dry. "Don't come out," she advised, "I'm indecent."

"Cadet . . ." the Tek chided warningly.

"Thanks, Brufen!" she called. She opened a fresh packet of underwear and slipped into them, pulling on her pale-blue Street fatigue pants and a similarly-colored T-shirt with 'CADET' stenciled over the shoulders in yellow. She checked her chronometer – still time for breakfast, and she'd be drokked if she ate it in leathers and armor unless she had to. When she was first assigned to _Aegis_ she'd plated-up as soon as she was out of the shower, munching toast and ecks in full kit. Cornelius and Anderson wore fatigue pants with only a T-shirt on top – sentencing-black for her, but his was justice-blue with the Academy eagle screen-printed on the front and 'TUTOR' across the shoulders – and they'd shared a knowing look. "We all did it," Anderson had said with a shrug, and Cornelius had nodded.

She hadn't understood what they'd meant, but now – after a month of active duty and two weeks of nominally ten- (and more likely eleven- or twelve-, or fourteen-) hour shifts – she certainly got it; fatigues were hot, heavy, uncomfortable, the armor-web even worse. It made the simplest action draining, merely lifting your gun a herculean effort. She put on the leather and plated-up at the last possible moment, getting out of them as soon as she was able.

"I'm decent!" she called, logging on to her datapad. She scrolled through it while she walked aft to the galley, distractedly making some coffee. As it perked, she glanced at Anderson's bunk abaft of hers – the curtain was drawn. "Cassandra?" she asked. It was rare for Quartermain to be awake before her boss, but with her having been up so late it was possible she might have slept in. She opened the curtain a little. "I made . . ."

There was no unruly tangle of rich blonde curls on the pillow. Quartermain pulled the curtain fully back – the bed was pristine, crisply made, sheets flat as a mirror (Quartermain's own rack was a Grud-awful mess that would've earned her a demerit in the dorms). She put her hand on it – cool as the air; it hadn't been slept in recently.

She tossed her datapad down and marched to the for'ard bulkhead, sliding the bridge door open. "Hey," she said, glancing about – she could only see Betancourt and Brufen, holding datapads and styli of their own, checking readings on the control panel and HUD against them. "I made coffee. Cassandra with you?" Betancourt shook his head.

"Hasn't come back yet," he said. "Guess she stayed at the clinic?"

"Hmm." Quartermain distractedly nodded her thanks and went back into the squad room. There were faint noises of metal-on-metal from above. She went up the ladder into the body of the airship's envelope – it was bright here, with blue-white fluorescent lamps illuminating the white-painted bracing framework with ugly, flat light. Ladders and gantries led upwards, both to the crow's nest on the top of the balloon and to give access to _Aegis_' machinery.

An impromptu gym had been set up on top of the gondola; treadmills, weight machines and benches were bolted to the deck, free weights maglocked into racks. Cornelius was lying on his back, naked except for athletic shorts, bench-pressing a barbell that had to weigh more than he did. A spotter-'bot was attached to the head of the bench and as he straightened his arms a red light flashed and it gave out a sour note. Cornelius' face twisted with frustration and effort; Quartermain noticed his right fist was a good inch or so lower than his left. He brought the bar back down and pushed up again – this time, both lights lit green and the note was affirmative. "Nine," it said. "One more – go for the burn."

Quartermain patiently waited, studiously incurious, while he lifted again. She had lots of older brothers, but that wasn't entirely why his nudity didn't phase her. She'd grown up a lot over the last six months and she wasn't a little girl any more; she'd put away the last of her childish and unjudicial fantasies sitting by his hospital bed a fortnight before. "Ten," said the robot. "Set completed. Next exercise is . . ."

"Sir." Quartermain said crisply. He lifted his head to look at her. "You're awake early."

He racked the weight and rolled off the bench, wincing as he gingerly touched his ribs under his armpit. "Morning, Jackie," he smiled. "Normally when you say that it's you that's up late – but, yes, you're right. Wanted to get the workout in – still got some stiffness and weakness in the right arm." He rotated his shoulder and pressed at his ribs again. "Still, you didn't come here to swap gym tips – what's the skinny?"

"Well, I wouldn't mind some advice, Sir," she admitted. Cornelius would never be the poster-boy for bodybuilding – while undeniably tall, dangerously handsome and massively muscular, his flesh was crisscrossed with scars from Rawne's blade, white wounds writhing amid the rough, dark hair. Nor he didn't have the shredded, cut, vascular look of the aspirational photographs some of her gym-bunny classmates had taped to the inside of their lockers (there had been, for a while, a brisk trade in reproductions of a clandestinely-taken picture of Novak at the weigh-in for the inter-sector tournament; with her ripped, lean, gorgeous, and at her physical peak in midnight-blue sports bra and briefs, the clientele had been equally-divided between girls wanting inspiration and boys wanting . . . something else. That had lasted until Novak discovered and started handing out demerits and black-eyes with equal aplomb. The photographer had never been found – Cadets didn't attend the weigh-in, so the enterprising and expelled entrepreneur couldn't have taken the picture – but Novak made it clear once she _did_ find the perpetrator he would discover just _what_ those muscles could do).

But there was something more appealing about his broad-shouldered, deep-chested, muscle-slabbed, sweat-gleaming bulk than the precise, preening, tanned-and-shaved-and-oiled body-sculptures in the competitions. It was _practical_ for Judicial work – he and Quartermain had responded to a gang rumble and she had watched in critical amazement as a perp, kicking and cartwheeling like the final reel of an imported Hong Tong chop-socky movie, had taken down two other Judges in a matter of seconds and then been stopped in an instant by Cornelius. He'd simply caught a blindingly-fast kick by the ankle in one massive hand and smashed most of the bones of the perp's face to splinters with a single, devastating punch. Silence had fallen, broken only by the _krak!_ of Cornelius extending his daystick and asking, "Any more for any more?"

There hadn't been.

Cornelius laughed. "You should talk to my sister, Cadet," he said toweling off his bare chest and arms. "I just follow the 'bot – she writes the programs. What you got? You make breakfast?"

"No," stammered Quartermain. "Well, yes – coffee, that is. But that's not it – Cassandra's not here, Sir. She didn't come . . ." She realized she'd been about to say _home_. "Back," she finished, somewhat lamely.

Cornelius shrugged. "She's probably sacked out," he suggested. "Sucked down that 'caf, got wired to her eyeballs and crashed. You tried calling her?" Quartermain shook her head. "Well, let's," he said, slinging the towel over his shoulders, taking the plates off the bar and putting them back in the racks. Quartermain helped him, huffing and puffing even with individual disks.

Cornelius went straight to his locker when they reached the squad room, taking out his communicator. Without even really looking he told Quartermain, "Fix your rack, Cadet. Cornelius to Anderson – come in, Cassie." There was no response; he switched frequencies and tried again with the same lack of result. "Hmm," he said. He glanced at Quartermain – the Cadet was folding her sheets into the last neat hospital corner. "She's probably asleep. The comms suite'll confirm her GPS." He pulled his glove onto his left arm, lifting it again to his mouth as he moved toward the bridge. "Med-Judge Rhinne, this is Cornelius – come in please."

"_This is Rhinne._" The doctor's voice was soft at the edges, muffled by tiredness.

"Anderson with you?" asked Cornelius.

"_Negative,_" she said, "_but I'm not at the clinic – got another call, went out again._" That explained the tiredness, the shortness of the sentences – Rhinne had to have been awake for twenty-four hours or more. "_Why? She not with you?_"

"No," said Cornelius. "She's probably at your clinic, catching some Zs." Rhinne chuckled.

"_Wish I was,_" she muttered.

Cornelius winced with sympathy. "Sorry," he said.

"_Meh._" Rhinne didn't seem too bothered. "_Stims are a thing. Better living through chemistry, you know?_" Cornelius smiled – he . . . _remembered_ wasn't quite the right word, but _knew about_ a particularly tough week or so when he'd been sustained more by stims and hypno-refreshment than honest sleep. "_Gotta go,_" said Rhinne, "_they're wheeling in more casualties. If I see Anderson, I'll tell her you're looking for her, okay?_" Despite the fact she couldn't see him, he nodded. "_Stay fit,_" she said, signing off.

"Flash the bronze," he said distractedly. He reached for the bridge door's control, but before he could touch it it slid open and Betancourt stepped out, his attention on a datapad in his hand. He bounced off Cornelius with an oath – fortunately, he was coming to refill his _empty_ 'caf mug.

"Whoa, sorry, JC!" he exclaimed. He made a show of looking the bulky and nearly-nude Judge up and down. "You're the only guy I know who looks bigger out of armor," he quipped.

Cornelius didn't smile. He put a massive hand on the pilot's shoulder and turned him around, directing him back onto the bridge. "Cassie's not answering her comm," he said. "Ping her lawscreen – get me her GPS."

Brufen set his jaw and gave a very slight shudder at Cornelius' half-dressed bulk dripping sweat on his clean bridge, but didn't say a word. Cornelius ignored him as Betcancourt slid himself into the comms chair, his fingers flying over the board, flicking switches. "Needs to verify senior Judge's ID," he said – even from a secured platform like _Aegis_, triangulating a Judge's location required authorization; the information was too (very probably even _fatally_) valuable. Cornelius stepped forward and held his gauntlet near the scanner.

"Cornelius, John R, Psi Division," he said. His lawscreen gave a metallic beep and a blue bar advanced with the DNA analysis. Lights flashed green and a map appeared on the console – it showed sector nine, with a golden eagle icon near Mercy Hospital. Betancourt zoomed in – Anderson's GPS was inside the clinic at the edge of the plaza. Cornelius glanced down at Quartermain. "She's there – like I said, probably asleep."

"I can wake her, JC," Betancourt offered – a tired Judge might sleep through a standard comm chime, but the emergency broadcast alert was loud enough to raise the dead. Cornelius shook his head.

"Let her sleep – she was probably up half the night. Try her again in an hour, I'm taking a shower."

Betancourt raised an eyebrow. "I know there's a lot of you, JC," he remarked dryly, "but it shouldn't take _that_ long for you to get clean." Cornelius batted his shoulder without malice; the pilot gave a theatrical flinch.

"Set course for the Academy," he told him. "Jackie, get Pepper on the horn – my compliments and I need an appointment; want to talk about Cassie and Mercy." Quartermain nodded.

"Yessir," she said crisply. "Sir?" she called after him as he walked aft towards the washroom. "You want me with you?" He turned and looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"How else are you gonna learn anything, Cadet?" he asked, not unreasonably. "Get dressed."

oOo

"Quit twitching, Cadet – he's a veep, not a gila-munja."

Quartermain glanced over at Cornelius as the elevator ascended. He was standing at parade ground ease, not even looking at her, calm as a stone. "Yes, Sir," she muttered, fiddling with her armor web for the tenth time. She managed to stay still for about five seconds and then sighed nervously and turned to face the mirrored wall, adjusting her gear once again.

"Cadet . . ."

She spun back and snapped into attention. "Yes, Sir," she said. "Sorry, Sir. Just a veep." Cornelius nodded. "But _senior_ Vice-Principal!" she exclaimed, spinning towards him. "He's not like Novak – she's _nice_. He's . . ."

Cornelius turned to her. "Tom's okay," he said, his voice firm in its hypocrisy. "And he likes you, thinks you're a good Judge."

Quartermain gaped, not sure which piece of information shocked her more. "He's got a first name?" she eventually, and idiotically, asked.

"Of course!" exclaimed Cornelius. "What did you think the _T_ stood for?"

She considered. "Tutor?" she suggested with uncertain self-mockery.

The elevator doors opened with a _ding_ and Cornelius strode through them, walking confidently through the corridors of the senior instructors' level of the Academy of Law, Quartermain fairly scurrying at his heels. "Sir?" she asked. "Does he _really_ think I'm a good Judge?" Cornelius took one more step and then stopped, turning to face her.

"Yes, Jackie," he said with feeling, "and so do I – _if_ you'll stop worrying. You're not a Cadet being sent to the principal's office because you goofed up – you're a Judge conducting an investigation. Understand?" She nodded firmly and he smiled, setting off once again. "Anything in the reports stick out to you? What did you make of the SJS investigation?"

"Didn't get around to reading that last night, Sir," she admitted. "I was concentrating mostly on Med-Judge Rhinne's autopsies. But I reviewed it when you were in the shower – I can use Cassandra's clearance to download files to the _Aegis_ systems, copied it from the SJS databases." She shrugged. "I dunno, Sir – I'm no expert, but it seemed like a pretty simple case. Rawne shot Rindón and . . ."

Cornelius stopped dead, laying his hand on Quartermain's shoulder to halt her too. "Wait," he said, "what? _Who_ shot Rindón?"

"Rawne, Sir," she said. "I remembered it because . . . well, _Rawne_. Why?"

"That's not what the hardcopies say – they say _Slocum_ did it."

Quartermain looked uncertain. "Data-entry error?" she suggested without much hope. Cornelius shook his head.

"Those printouts come directly the digital records – when they were printed back in '96 that's the way the reports read. Anyway," he asked, "did the digital report even _mention_ Slocum?" She shook her head. "And the hardcopies don't mention Rawne. There's something going on here. Cornelius to Brufen," he said into his communicator.

"_Go ahead, Cornelius._"

"The file that Jackie was looking at – the SJS report; can you tell me the revision history?"

"_Stand by._" There was silence on the line for a few moments. "_No revision history available,_" said Brufen.

Cornelius furrowed his brow. "It was never revised, or . . . ?" Cornelius could almost hear Brufen shrug.

"_Don't know,_" the Tek admitted. "_No revision history is attached, but that doesn't mean it wasn't. If I had access to the original file rather than a download . . ._"

"If you had that access, your boot knife would have a skull rather than a cog on the pommel," Cornelius said shortly – they both knew it was a fruitless endeavor for anyone else in the Department to request direct access to SJS files. "Thanks anyway, Cornelius out."

"Someone edited the report?" asked Quartermain. "But why?"

Cornelius' answer was grim. "Slabs don't blab, Cadet."

oOo

"I'm sorry, JC – I'd love to help you, but I can't."

Cornelius shifted his weight from one foot to the other – watching the one-legged Tutor limp around on his plasteen stump was throwing his own balance off. Pepper had lost his leg below the knee years ago – plenty of rumors of just _how_ circulated the Academy, ranging from the plausible (gunshot wound or a bad bike accident) to the dramatic (bitten off by a dune shark or caught in the cleats of a heavy tank while fighting _mano a mano_ with a perp) to the ridiculous (self-amputated with a boot knife after being left tied to a bed by the jealous party in a love-triangle) but no-one really knew the truth. Whatever it had been, it must have bad enough – or there were other injuries – to make the usual bionics useless; plenty of Judges in active service had replacement limbs – even eyes, ears or internal organs. Perhaps Pepper had just decided his place wasn't on the streets and had welcomed the opportunity to teach the next generation of Judges.

At least half of that was a motivation Cornelius understood.

"Can't, Tom, or _won't_?" Beside him, Quartermain gasped at the impropriety of it all; yes, _in theory_, a Judge with an ESE-rating investigating a crime could go anywhere and do anything and, _technically speaking_, with Anderson incommunicado Cornelius (as her deputy) assumed her rank, responsibility and clearance – but this was still _Vice-Principal Pepper_. 'Pepper by name, peppery by nature' was the oft-repeated Academy mantra.

Pepper laughed, turning from looking out of his office windows. "Don't worry, Cadet," he assured her, "JC and I go back a long way." He stepped towards her. "How's he doing? As your designated Tutor, I mean? Learning anything?"

"Sir, yes Sir." She was at stiff attention. "Thank you, Sir. I am not privy to my report-cards, Sir, but I believe . . ."

"I asked you a question, Tom." Cornelius had assumed Pepper's place by the window, looking out over the Academy quadrangle. A class of junior Cadets – perhaps seven or eight years old, the age Anderson had been when she went to Mercy – were doing setting-up exercises. The pale Autumn sunlight hadn't reached down the walls yet and the synth-grass was spotted with dew, the morning crisp and cold. He timed the turn of his head perfectly, looking over his shoulder and giving Pepper his profile an infuriating second after the Tutor had spun angrily to him. "You gonna answer it?"

Pepper took a lurching step towards him, his pegleg coming down with an ugly _klonk_. "Who the Dok do you think you are?"

"I'll tell you who I'm not." Cornelius' voice was relaxed – he seemed to be the only comfortable person in the room. "I'm not a Cadet, and unless I take this jacket off I'm not one of your staff. I'm a Judge investigating multiple homicides going back five years and likely connected to what happened at Mercy – and I want to know if you _can't_ help me or _won't_ help me." He shrugged and turned back to the window, lifting his eyes to look at the roofline opposite. He shifted the focus of his eyes, staring for a second or two at the way the light refracted within the laminated glass. Abruptly, he spun around. "Well, Tom?" he asked, sitting on the corner of Pepper's desk with his arms folded.

Pepper sighed. "I don't think the information would be useful to you," he said, "I really don't. And before you tell me you'll be the judge of that," he quickly added with a knowing grin, "it's not mine to share."

"Cassie doesn't remember what happened, Tom – not clearly. _You_ do."

"And until she _does_ remember," Pepper said decisively, "I'm not comfortable sharing it. Some dark spug went on in that place, JC," he said. Cornelius nodded.

"I know – I've read the reports. But there's nothing in them about what happened to her – and her file has a _lot_ of redacted bars, even for my clearance. I suspect some of it's redacted even for _her_," he added darkly. "All she remembers were games and tests – they were _fun_."

"More than that happened," Pepper assured him.

"Which she doesn't remember!" exclaimed Cornelius.

"And maybe there's a _reason_ for that." Pepper's quiet words stopped Cornelius in his tracks. "I know you're trying to help your partner . . ."

"Friend."

". . . but do you think I'm _not_?" Pepper continued as if Cornelius hadn't spoken. "I rescued her from Mercy – there wasn't anything I could have done to stop what Rindón was doing. But I saved her; inducted her by special instruction, watched over her while she was here, argued with Kim about her. I put my rep on the line to get her an Assessment – thank Grud the Chief Judge assigned Dredd and not some bronze-polisher who'd have dotted every J and swashed every Q and failed her by the book." Cornelius had to smile at the counter-intuitive (albeit accurate) notion that Dredd was a Judge who might bend regs. "She was my protege, as much as you were Kim's." Pepper's steel-gray eyes held Cornelius' gold-flecked chocolate ones, begging him to believe. "I _care_ about her, JC."

Cornelius was silent for a few moments. "Yeah, I know you do, Tom," he admitted. Really, what claim did he have that this man couldn't trump? He'd known Anderson for less than a year – whatever he felt for her, what she felt for him, the complex intersections of their professional and personal lives, the delicate relationship he daren't analyze too deeply, Pepper had known and cared about her for far longer. "Thanks." He turned to go.

"JC." Pepper's voice stopped him at the door. "Thanks for looking out for her – I can't now, not really. Aside from anything else," he self-deprecatingly gestured at his missing limb, "she's not a Cadet any more. It's not easy to get used to that, you know?" he admitted. Cornelius nodded, only now wondering why Novak still kept him on the roster of hand-to-hand Tutors. "It's good she's got a partner like you who can watch her back out there."

"_Friend,_" Cornelius repeated firmly. Pepper inclined his head, accepting the rebuke. "Thanks, Tom – means a lot. C'mon, Cadet – let's not waste any more of the Vice Principal's valuable time."

"Yessir," said Quartermain, snappily saluting Pepper, who returned the gesture smartly. "Thank you, Sir. Goodbye, Sir." She spun on her heels and marched after Cornelius. She found him in the anteroom, surprising the secretary-auxiliary by stripping off his armor web and then fatigue jacket.

"Watch these, can you?" he asked, dropping them on a chair.

"Er . . . of course, Judge," stammered the stunned citizen.

"_Tutor_," corrected Cornelius, gesturing his shoulders. He drew his daystick and deployed it with a sharp _krak!_

"_Oww!_" Quartermain exclaimed as he whacked her across the fanny with the practiced flick-of-the-wrist every . Tutor had mastered. "What was that . . . ?"

"Move, Cadet," he said sharply. "Clockwise around the main corridor, to stairwell A and then up to the roof." She stared at him, gawping. "And I mean _run!_" He lifted the baton again.

"Yessir!" she exclaimed, and set off at a sprint, Cornelius pacing her easily. She had no idea what game he was playing, or if there was some method to his madness, but she knew better than to defy a Tutor in this frame of mind. She sped along the corridor, turning the first corner almost immediately. Administrative staff sprang out of her way – she had to admit, it was _fun_ to get to run in the corridors; regs were usually very clear, and to have the milling crowds of auxiliaries part like waves before her was delicious. It was certainly the fastest way to get around the Academy . . .

_Ah . . ._

She increased her pace, really pushing herself now, feeling the burn of lactic acid in her muscles and the ache in her lungs. Fatigues and armor were _not_ designed for sprinting, but she could run her body on willpower long enough to get where Cornelius needed to be. She skidded as she shoulder-barged the door to the stairwell, bounding up the steps three at a time. At the very last instant, Cornelius sprang past her and they burst out onto the roof of the Academy directly opposite Pepper's office window.

"Nice boots," said Cornelius.

Quartermain wasn't doubled over, but she was panting, pleased with her time but annoyed Cornelius wasn't even breathing hard. She got her lungs under control and looked at the woman Cornelius was addressing – a Judge, blonde and blue-eyed, with a face almost painfully beautiful. She was rising from a kneeling crouch, slipping out of a non-reflective stealth cloak, a J-Dept equipment case in one hand, the other automatically falling to her lawgiver. She recovered quickly, laughing when she saw who it was. "JC," she said, relieved. "You made me jump."

"He just might," Quartermain said with prophetic darkness. Cornelius didn't even spare her a glance.

"Find someplace else to be, Cadet," he ordered. Quartermain nodded slowly and jerked her thumb over her shoulder."

"I'll . . . go get your jacket and plates, boss," she said, fading through the doorway and leaving him alone on the rooftop with Hawkridge. She laughed once more, as ugly to Cornelius' ears as her body was beautiful to his eyes, and sauntered towards him.

"You wanted me all to yourself, eh, JC?" she asked with a suggestive grin. Her uniform leathers were well-fitted, custom tailored over her lovely hips and thighs, the straps of her armor web cinched tighter than necessary around her narrow waist. She was sashaying as she moved, swinging her hips and hooding her ice-blue eyes, her feet coming down in a laser-straight line. She stopped close enough that her scent enveloped him, cocking her body and arching her throat. Very deliberately, she laid her hands flat on his chest, her fingers sliding over his pectorals and gauging the hot solidity of his muscles. "She'll be back soon, so . . ."

There was nothing but a thin layer of cloth and thinner resolve between his flesh and her touch; his skin tingled beneath her caressing fingers, his heart beating hollow as his world narrowed to her questioning, answering, suggestive eyes above the crimson promise of her delectable mouth. He felt his blood surge, his breath become short and hard, resistance he hadn't thought he would need beginning to crack.

His body's response was not surprising – there was little he could do to fight physiology – but his mind and will's submission shocked him, as did just how much effort it took to resist her. For precious moments, he simply stood there and let her have her way – and then, abruptly, he grabbed her wrist, thumb on the pressure-point, and twisted with a fraction of his strength. She gave a yelp as her hand was peeled off his chest and forced to her shoulder blade, spinning her around. He pincered powerful fingers around the back of her neck and held her immobile. She struggled ineffectually, but he was so much bigger and stronger and knew every hold-breaking trick she might try. "Let me go!" she screamed. "It's not . . ."

With her spell broken his blood began to soften. "Once again, you're screwing up the disguises with your wardrobe," he said, infuriatingly calm.

"I don't know . . ."

"The gloves," he said flatly. "It was the boots before – you replaced the skull helmet with the rebreather model, but you forgot the boots had the different knife sheath."

She tossed her head dismissively, wincing in pain as she moved against his immobilizing grip. "I _told_ you," she hissed, "that was Rawne's dagger – he left it to . . ."

"No," said Cornelius. "I told you that – and I lied; _I_ got his blade. Now, it's the gloves – insulated flexiceramic."

"It's to handle the tech!" she exclaimed desperately. "It's sensitive – Weather Control monitoring equipment; static'll throw the calibration off. It's to protect _it_ from _me_, not the other way around. I transferred off the wall – got a job with Tek, I've been . . ."

"On the Academy roof?" asked Cornelius scornfully. "In a stealth cloak?"

Now there was the _slightest_ pause before the next obfuscation. "If a Cadet sees me up here they'll report and it causes a kerfuffle . . ." she began, but didn't get any further before he slid his massive fingers around her slender throat and choked her to silence.

"I've had enough of your drokking _lies_, Kris!" He pressed her head against his shoulder, hissing in her ear. "Start telling me the truth or, Grud help me, I start breaking bones. You're SJS – probably have been since the Academy. I saw the refraction of the eavesdropping laser in the glass – you're spying on Pepper or me. Why?"

She gave a grim smile, snorting a laugh mostly through her nose. "Despite your _pathetic_ infatuation," she mocked in a purring growl, "I didn't expect you'd let me get _quite_ this close." Her free hand snatched the taser from her belt and jabbed it backwards, it activating the instant the probes touched his flesh.

Wicked chains of lightning arced between them, high voltage current scouring its way through his kidneys. He grunted in pain and staggered backwards, letting go of her arm. She spun as he did, trying to keep the electrodes in contact with him, but he desperately brought his knee up, catching her in the solar plexus and knocking the two of them apart. Clutching his side and with his nerves still buzzing, he crashed down on one knee.

She rolled her bruised shoulder briefly to get the blood flowing again and then tabbed a control on her lawscreen; his lawgiver gave a negative note and cycled down. "Now," she said crisply, drawing her own weapon, "let's . . ."

Frantically, he flung himself at her, his arms wrapping around her waist. Her abdominal armor saved her from being winded, but he was inside the arc of the gun now and so all she could do was bring the butt down as he straightened and lifted her up. She missed his head, hitting him hard in the shoulder. He ignored it and toppled backwards, slamming her upside-down into the roof. She lifted her arms to protect her head, being crumpled into a tangled heap of limbs by his weight and bulk. By the time her world stopped spinning and she had sorted out which bit of her went where, she was slumped on the floor and he was standing over her, stripping magazine and slide from her gun. "No more games, Kris," he said evenly, tossing the fragments away.

Slowly, she got to her feet, rubbing her bruises. For a splintered second, calculating intelligence flashed in her ice-blue eyes and then her beautiful face transfigured with ugly rage. She snatched her boot knife from its scabbard, fingers working passionately on the hilt. "You killed Oberon," she hissed. "He was my _mentor_, my _friend!_ He was in your way and you _murdered_ him!"

Warily, not taking her eyes off her, Cornelius bent and lifted his daystick from where it had fallen. She was a competent fighter – above-average with a blade, certainly – but, without false-modesty, he knew he was in a league of his own. Still, he knew better than anyone it paid to be cautious when it came to knives – especially out of armor. "You don't mean that, Kris," he said evenly.

"_Yeah,_" snarled Hawkridge through gritted teeth, "I do!" She tensed, bracing her thighs, telegraphing the blow, and lunged for him, the point of the blade driving directly towards his stomach.

He twisted his hips almost casually out of the way, catching her wrist as she overbalanced. He brought the daystick whistling down, cracking her across the spine just above the pelvis. Her armor held, but she cried out and crumpled to her knees, the knife pried from her hand. He kicked it away and hauled her upright, one massive steel-trap hand clamped around her throat. Even in full gear, she weighed less than he'd been benching earlier and she could do nothing except cling desperately to his arm, choking as her feet scraped the roof as she was forced inexorably back. Suddenly, there was nothing beneath her boots and she realized with an empty feeling in her chest she was dangling over the quadrangle.

She spat in his face. "Go on," she taunted. "Kill me like you killed . . ." His tightening grip choked her to silence.

"No. More. _Games!_" Cornelius' eyes were blazing with cold fury. "You're not angry I killed Rawne – you're incapable of that kind of compassion. But you want me to _think_ it's personal rather than professional. No dice, cutie; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action."

"It's only . . . the _second_ . . . time," Hawkridge gurgled. He shook his head.

"We _happened_ to be at the Academy together," he told her. "_Coincidentally_ you were on the wall in August."

She gave a crooked smile – his grip on her throat was constricting, hers on his arm slackening, lips turning blue and face chalk-white. "You . . . believe in them?" she said in a slurring whisper, managing to convey contempt for his naivety even as she blacked out.

He gave a short, cynical laugh and stepped backwards, turning to toss her on the roof. She struggled to her knees, gasping and massaging her throat. She looked at him with musing curiosity. "Can I ask? If I'd said we were lovers, would it have helped sell it?"

He stared at her with blank contempt. "I'd have believed you did it," he said, "but only because you were playing him too."

She hung her head, her shoulders slumping. "You cared about me, once," she whispered, wiping away a sudden tear.

He stepped towards her, grabbing her by the plates of her armor and hauling her to her feet. She gasped, her face a vid-serial-worthy picture of perfect terror. Cornelius still wasn't buying it. "Enough _lies_, Kris!" he snapped. "I'm _done_ with it, you hear me? Tell the truth for _once_ in your drokking life!"

Something cracked in her facade, but whether it showed her true interior or merely another layer of her shell was impossible to know. Her shoulders heaved and she cried, tears coursing down her cheeks. "It's _hard_, JC!" she sobbed, her breath hitching in her bruised throat. "To tell the truth, when all you've done is lied."

A pang of compassion took him, but she'd cried robo-wolf so many times already. He dropped her to the roof. She tugged her armor back into place, looking small and vulnerable. "Why is SJS interested in me? The Pittsburgh Gate, now here. What do you want to know?"

She looked at him with scorn. "Would you believe me if I told you?"

He gave a bloodless smile. "Try me."

She tossed her head angrily. "It's simple!" she exclaimed. "SJS is just _interested_ in you – how many times has Cal pulled the chair out for you; three? _Four?_ You're the perfect fit – a natural leader, brilliant investigator, and a _master_ at hand-to-hand. How many of us have you taken out, _with_ your gun disabled?" He rolled his eyes at her. "No, really – that's a _huge_ part of the job. How many arrests do you _think_ end up in some idiotic brawl? Here's a hint – pretty much all of them."

He shrugged – that, at least, made some kind of sense; but not the rest. "Nice try, Kris – but that's not it. Why follow me, why eavesdrop? SJS still interested in psis, still wanting oversight? Strange it would be _you_ sent to watch me – Rawne's protege. What did they call you at the Academy, 'the dagger's daughter'?"

She scowled. "You know what they called _you_?" she asked scornfully.

"JC," he answered blithely, as if he didn't know that wasn't the _only_ nickname he'd had. "And it wasn't because those were my initials. C'mon, Kris – give."

She folded her arms petulantly. "You can't hold me," she said. "I say _one word_ and you're decorating the inside of a 'cube – a permanent problem with IA even if you beat the rap. So don't threaten me."

"I don't," said Cornelius shortly, "and you shouldn't either – it's a sign of weakness. Shoot, or clear the range. You won't close the nutcracker because you're Clandestine and your bosses don't want that getting out."

"Well," she said haughtily, her arms akimbo, "if I _am_ SJS Clandestine – and that's not an admission, by the way – regs are very clear; you are _not_ permitted to disclose even _suspicion_."

Cornelius shrugged easily. "Why do you think I sent the Cadet away?" he asked rhetorically. "Who are you taking orders from?"

She straightened into attention. "SJS works as _one_," she said firmly. "No-one's running some side op or . . ."

"Bullspug!" Cornelius' shout shocked her to stunned silence. "That's garbage and we both know it – Rawne was dirty, playing his own game."

"I don't believe that," she said firmly. It was perhaps he first time he thought she was telling the truth.

"The distrustworthy are ever distrustful," he snapped dismissively. "He framed Cassie, tried to have her killed. He attacked _me_ and I took him down." Her look of aggrieved disbelief was too much; in frustration he tore off his T-shirt. "You think I got these _shaving?_" he snarled, gesturing at the writhing network of scars.

Hawkridge appraised him coolly. "Damn," she said with soft appreciation, "but you could keep some pretty little psi warm at night with all that. Tell me; is 'mindfrakk' just an expression or . . . ?"

He'd actually stepped toward her, his hand cocked to backhand her across the face, before he realized what he was doing. She flinched from him – a purely instinctive, feminine reaction to such a cruelly-dismissive masculine blow. He lowered his hand. "Shouldn't have done that," he muttered.

She smiled weakly. "It's alright – I . . ."

"I didn't say I was sorry," he reminded her. "I shouldn't have let you get to me; you're still playing games – if I thought it'd help, I'd knock every tooth out of that pretty little head. But I suspect you'd take your secrets to resyk."

She folded her arms again. "Damn straight I would." She watched as he pulled his T-shirt back on – with less than a year on the streets, the yellow Academy eagle on the justice-blue field was still a powerful symbol of authority for her. Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair, wincing as her bruised wrist pained her. She massaged it as she spoke. "We were friends once, JC," she said. "At least, we weren't enemies. You . . . cared about me. I know I said it was infatuation, but . . ."

"Get to the point, Kris."

Her face fell. "It meant something, okay?" she admitted. "Lots of boys . . . were interested, but you . . . you _liked_ me, JC. At least, it always felt like you did. You were kind. We . . . we could have been good together. We drifted apart."

"You went to SJS."

"And you went Street!" she exclaimed. "Yes, Oberon offered me SJS and it fitted because I was wounded and maybe I wanted daddy to love me, but you have to admit _at least_ as much happened between you and Novak."

Cornelius stared at her, his face a carefully-composed mask but his mind churning; she was right, of course – it was rare for Crystal Hawkridge to_ not_ be right once you stripped the obfuscations and misdirections away from the half-truths. The Academy had demanded Novak as a Tutor, the Council themselves overruling her objections to the transfer, and she'd pushed him to take the place she'd been denied – Street Judge. Yet she'd also groomed him to join her, maybe even replace her, on the faculty. "So what?" he said eventually.

She shrugged. "So I owe you, I guess," she said. "SJS wanted tabs on you – yes, because you were connected with Anderson and the psis, but also because they _wanted_ you. I volunteered – our time at the Academy was supposed to throw you off, make you trust me." She laughed weakly. "Look how _that_ turned out. And I suspected something – about Oberon. I didn't think he was dirty – I still don't, I think he overreached and made a mistake and . . ." She sighed. "Whatever, it's corpses through the grinders now. I guess I wanted my own answers."

"Do you have them?" he asked evenly.

"You're not the kind of guy who lies, JC," she said with weary admission. "Oberon was ambitious – we all knew that. What was the joke at the Academy? It was only 'cause he couldn't decide between head of SJS, Principal or being on the Council he stayed where he was. That report you pulled? The system flagged it – he _edited_ it, buried the revision history. He saw how Cal got noticed after his cleanup of Mercy, how other Judges were getting ahead with big cases. He felt like he'd been passed over for promotion, got trapped at the Academy – in a Tutor's uniform too-early. A lot of the Judges involved in that case were dead – he thought he could get away with it."

"What about Slocum?" Cornelius asked. "And Cal – they'd know the truth." Hawkridge shrugged.

"Slocum's finished his climb," she explained. "He's where he wants to be and doesn't want to go any further."

Cornelius nodded, understanding. "Cal's robohound."

"Loyal lieutenant," Hawkridge corrected him silverly. "He probably wouldn't have cared – he and Oberon went back a long way. And who knows what he thought Cal would do? But if the edit got out . . ." Her shoulders slumped and face fell. "I wanted to protect my friend's reputation – you understand that, right, JC?" she asked. "I'm not heartless."

"Hmm," said Cornelius without conviction. "Even if I believe you – and I'm not sure I do – your compassion's misplaced. Your friend was _dirty_." He looked past her to see the stairwell door opening and Quartermain coming onto the roof, hands busy with the oversized bulk of his jacket and plates. "I hope this is an example of your impeccable timing, Cadet," he said as he saw the worried look on her face.

"No, Sir," she said. "Nick buzzed me – Rhinne contacted him; she's back at the clinic and . . . well, Cassandra's not there, Sir."

Cornelius pulled his fatigues on, zipping the jacket closed and snapping the buckles of the armor web. "Have them ping her lawscreen," he said.

Quartermain shook her head. "It's not that . . . There's surveillance, Sir." She glanced at Hawkridge. "I think you should view it on _Aegis_, Sir," she said meaningfully. The SJS Judge huffed and folded her arms.

Cornelius looked at Quartermain for a second; _Manta_ was already coming in to land, settling on the roof about a hundred yards away. He nodded. "Right," he said shortly. He glanced at Hawkridge and seemed to come to a decision. He reached behind his neck, pulling the stiletto dagger from its hidden sheath. "You should have this," he offered. "He would have wanted you to."

Her eyes trembled and she bit her lip as she took it, cradling it in her hands and either not noticing or caring he offered it to her at the fullest extent of their arms. "Thank you," she said softly. "You used to care about me," she said, almost as if reminding herself.

"I still do," Cornelius told her, striding towards _Manta_ with Quartermain at his heels, "which is why I'm telling you to get out while you still can." He turned at the ramp and flashed her a quick salute. "See you 'round."

She screwed up her eyes and held her hands over her ears as the aircraft lifted off, watching it rise into the air and scream across the sky so fast it almost seemed to vanish. She massaged her throat, gingerly probing the base of her spine. "Not if I see you first," she muttered.

**A/n :** The return of Hawkridge! I wasn't sure what I was going to do with her, but JudgeTrask's suggestion back in "Highway Don't Care" reviews of making her a DeMarco-type character was an influence. Of course, she is playing her own game here and so nothing she says should _really_ be trusted . . . but you knew that!

Pepper is a comics character – he is from "The Day The Law Died". The dates suggested for him don't seem to work in the comics – it says he taught Dredd (which would make him having been a tutor at least 20 years before, but he doesn't look that old). I am leaving it vague here as to his chronology.

Rawne's first name of "Oberon" was inspired – as was joked about in the author's notes for "Aegis" – by Oberyn Martell in "A Game of Thrones".

Lots of little touches of backstory here – all of them feed into the larger narrative (can comics readers see where I am taking it?) but also support the revelations in this particular story. Like it? Hate it? Please review!


	6. Seduction

**A/n : **This chapter contains mild references to sexual violence, although nothing explicit. These may disturb some readers.

**Prog 6 : Seduction**

_Do not be afraid_.

Anderson woke crisply from the dreamless void between answers, the words fully-formed in her mind. For an instant she lay still, trying to analyze the sensation's identity and source, and then another was dropped into her mind, ripples spreading out from it like the waves made when a stone plopped into a still pond.

_Come, let us reason together – though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow._

She started upright, jerking herself into a sitting position on the cot, the shimmering blanket falling from her shoulders. Her naked skin gleamed pale in the silver light from the moon and the halogen lamps, the harsh illumination filtered through flimsy plasteen blinds. She passed a hand over her face, focusing her mind, and waited for it to come again.

_ Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool._

They were her thoughts – or flavored like them, at least; indistinguishable from the mechanism of her psyche, in sync with the ebb and flow of the tides of her mindscape, peculiar to her nature. It was impossible to discern where they ended and her own identity began.

_This city has become a whore – once full of justice, now murderers live in her._

Part of her recognized struggled to recognize the thoughts didn't belong to her; she wouldn't use those words, and didn't agree with the sentiment. Not completely, at least . . .

_Your bronze is tarnished, your wine mixed with water. Your leaders are rebels and the friends of perps; all love a bribe and run after gifts._

"N . . . n . . . _no!_" she grunted, swaying to her feet. She flailed at her uniform, pawing for her communicator. Despite herself, knowing it was foolish and a distraction, she challenged the thoughts. "Not all – there are _good people_, good Judges. In the 'blocks, out in the projects – decent families just trying to get by. People like mummy, like daddy . . ."

A soundless explosion of lightless illumination flooded her mind. She had the unmistakeable sensation of her psyche vibrating in pitch-perfect union with sympathetic frequencies, her identity rung like a bell. She opened her hand – she _wanted_ to do it, she'd _decided_ to – and she dropped her lawscreen.

_They care nothing for the widower's cause, and do not defend the fatherless._

Her mind should have been a fog, filled with confusing thoughts not her own, but instead was clear as crystal; there was no worse hive of scum and villainy than Mega City One, citizens quaking in fear of the gun and the gang, living their lives short-sighted and selfishly, selling out their friends and families to stave off the perps' predations or simply for their next fix. The cold, hard statistics about crime rates and recidivism, and her identity as part of the thin black-and-bronze line standing between the city and criminal chaos the Department had inculcated her with, as well as what her own eyes had seen patrolling those dirty streets, couldn't be denied.

She pressed her fists to her temples, gritting her teeth and falling to her knees. A very tiny part of her remained aware she was being influenced, understood her psyche was ringing to the harmony of a grotesquely powerful mind lurking just beyond the horizon of her awareness. Desperately, she made a last-ditch attempt to throw it off and press the emergency button on her lawscreen.

A sudden stab of raw pain lanced through her brain, squeezing an agonized yelp out of her and making her pitch forward, her spine arched and forehead pressed to the cold tile. She grit her teeth until they creaked, clenching her fists so hard her knuckles popped and her nails drew blood from her palms. "I . . . won't . . . !" she hissed.

_If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat candy and curry, and drink coffee all the days of your life._

"Nuh . . . un, n-no . . . !"

_ But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword._

Her mind a crimson sea, Anderson flung her head back, her back bending like a bow, her arms flung to the side. Distantly, she could hear a woman screaming, howling denials and entreaties, and realized with a dim-awareness the voice was her own.

_Wash yourself, make yourself clean, remove your evil from my sight. Cease your evil and learn to do good; seek after justice and end oppression, defend the orphan and plead for the widow._

"Yuh . . . y-yuh . . . yes . . ." she whispered.

The mind-boiling agony left her, and Anderson sagged forward, her nearly-nude body trembling and quivering, her underwear soaked to obsidian transparency by the sweat of pain, no longer resisting. To say her will had been _broken_ would be wrong; none of the thoughts were truly _alien_ to her, she agreed with them,would have been drawn to agree with them even without the psychic seduction. She hadn't been broken, she'd been _persuaded_ – the city was a hellhole, the haunt of gangbangers and tappers, pimps and hoes, tweakers, cookers and pushers. There was corruption in the Department – who, truly, knew that better than her? Had she not, explicitly, been recruited, been chosen, given an assessment despite that lingering three-percent fail, precisely to help the Judges win the war they were losing? Nine out of every ten citizens would break some law, the Judges themselves scarcely better, everyone justifying their actions, rationalizing their weaknesses away. Everyone was on the take, everyone was impure in thought, word and deed.

Only execution prevented a perp from re-offending. The only citizen who would _never_ offend was was a dead one. Life, itself, was inextricably linked with criminality.

Slowly, she stood, her hands hanging limply at her side. She nodded, hearing an unmistakeable summons, but before she could reach for her gear she stopped herself.

_Leave your deceptions, and bring your shame._

There was the slightest hitch in her movements as she hooked her thumbs into the sides of her sweat-soaked briefs and bent to slide them down her legs. She tangled them on an ankle, bending her knee to lift them into her hand and toss them onto the bed. Artlessly, she reached for the hem of her bra, crossing her arms over her chest to strip it over her head. Damp and fragrant with her blood-heat, it dangled from her fingers, the little book swinging in it like a stone in a slingshot. She pulled it out and folded it into her hand, dropping the bra on top of her briefs.

Her fingers trembling with grim guilt and hunger, she reached for her duty belt, snapping a well-used fastener open and pulling a pill bottle from the pouch. There was a prescription label pasted on the translucent orange cylinder – the name it showed wasn't hers. For long seconds, she stared at the horrible evidence of her own failings; she was no better than those she maligned, those bleeding this city dry. Something inside her chest clawed at her heart, her knees trembling with weakness and shame.

_I will lay my hand upon you and smelt away the dross from your bronze. I will wash away your inequities and cleanse you of your sin. You shall be tempered and your weaknesses purged – from all your idols I will free you. And then you shall be ready to bear the torch of my wrath against the enemies of justice, and I shall avenge myself against her foes. I shall make your Judges what they were at the beginning, and your Councilors shall be as they were at first._

Her hand shaking, she held her secret shame over the bed, intending to drop it on top of her underwear. She couldn't bring herself to do it. It was chilly in the clinic, but drops of sweat still beaded on her flesh amid the goosebumps as she struggled.

_I am the eagle, you may be my claws. If you come into me and I into you, you shall bring justice to this city. But apart from me, you can do nothing. Never forget that. You are what you are and shall be what you will be because of me._

Anderson nodded weakly, her lean body trembling, the tangles of her rich blonde hair plastered to her forehead, the gasoline-fire of her eyes tamed and tempered into an engine for another's purpose. Inelegantly, she walked towards the door and pushed it open, stepping out into the cold dampness of the plaza.

It was the darkest part of the night, the sun long-gone from the sky, its heat leeched from the pavement by the raw chill of the small hours of morning. She shivered as she stepped down the stairs, her feet curling away from the icy cold of the rough rockcrete slabs. Her breasts peaked in the chill, and she wrapped herself in her arms – both for warmth and to protect her modesty from prying eyes. Her mind fogged with uncertainty – what _was_ she doing, naked, unarmed, alone, out here?

_ Come to me, for you are wearied and burdened with many idols, and I will give you strength._

Imbued with new purpose, she walked toward the statue at the entrance of the hospital, the grille of the portcullis looming like sightless eyes above the mouthful of broken fangs that were the doors, the wings of the building spreading like mantled shoulders vast and dark. The angel's latest victims had been deposed, their corpses taken down from where they had hung and received their postmortem baptism, shriving them of the sins they had been executed for.

She stopped beneath the statue, staring up in rapture at the gigantic paragon of vengeful justice, his masculine power grotesque and obscene from her position beneath him. The rain had washed the plasteen pristine-white once more, the sculpted muscles gleaming wetly in the cold moonlight, harsh shadows cast by the halogen lamps. Her own naked flesh shone in the silver light, her skin paled by the chill, limbs long and lean, her body a blade of blanched-bronze, tight and tempered and toned by the Department for its own purposes.

_Take my demands upon you and learn from me, for I am just and only I have love for you in my heart._

Anderson turned at the lewd calls, the obscene attention from the trio of young men swaggering across the square. They looked like tappers, in baggy jeans and jackets worn over bare chests despite the cold. Their naked torsos were smooth with the hairless muscle of youth, crude tattoos on their pectorals. They were not gang signs – these were not color-cut, not made-men; if they were anything with the gangs, it was low-level enforcers, foot-soldiers at best. More than likely, they were hangers-on, minnows swimming around the pilot fish following the great sharks.

"Hey, blondie!"

"Wash day tomorrow, hot-stuff?"

"What's cookin', good-lookin'?"

Anderson's eyes flickered from one to the other as they approached. She could psynse their emotions – confusion and disbelief, amazement at the naked woman wandering the dangerous streets of Mega City One alone. And then she felt their thoughts shift – darker, deeper, hot and wet and hungry.

"You cold, baby? I'll warm ya up . . ."

"Cold? Man, you don't know spug – she's smokin' hot!"

"Not talking, babe? Don't worry – I've got a plan for those lips . . ."

Normally, three wannadie not-even-gangers lewdly leering at her wouldn't have made her nervous – not that they would have even dared if she were suited-and-booted in black-and-bronze, but even in citizen clothes she'd have been more confident; even without explicit weapons there were a lot of nasty things you could improvise with shoes, a belt, a comb, a handful of credit disks. A Judge was trained to be deadly if she only had one hand or one foot and was still alive.

But her nudity now made her feel somehow more vulnerable than mere nakedness should. Intentions transmitted themselves to her psynses, anatomically unlikely if not impossible scenarios informed by illicit pornography flowing through their minds. Her hands tied to the statue's feet, her face and tits pressed against the plinth, her ass up and exposed so that . . . slammed to her back on the dirty ground, spreadeagled and held open while . . . wrists tied behind her, forced to her knees and with her mouth . . .

"Imma break a piece of that off and . . . mmm-hum!"

"That pink little rosebud's gotta taste so _sweet_!"

"Git over here, bitch . . ."

She drew back from them, glancing behind her to find a way out, an exit from the plaza. They had her bracketed over one-hundred-twenty degrees of the circle; she had plenty of exit vectors, but they were taller than her with longer strides, wearing shoes, on their well-known turf, looking like they had done this kind of thing before and almost eagerly welcomed the chase.

She curled her hand into a hard fist, worried that her sense of panic did not dissipate to be replaced by adrenaline-keyed pitch of hyper-awareness as it usually did. She began to open her mouth to beg them not to.

And then the Angel stepped off its plinth and strode towards them, wings unfurled and feathers rattling, sword cocked over one massive shoulder to strike.

Anderson staggered as if slugged in the head, slumping against the statue, as a dreadful wave of psionic power rolled down from the heights of Mercy's tower and across the plaza. It forced her open, thrusting its way inside her, violating her with a satisfied surge of invasion. Stunned and stupefied, she clung to the plinth, her hand resting where the statue's foot had stood. Very briefly, she felt cold plasteen toes beneath her fingers and her subconscious mind warred against the false-reality imposed on her.

But only for a second – the grotesque strength of the mind that lay beyond the doors of Mercy forced itself deeper inside her, tearing her wider and implanting his thoughts into the fertile plain of her psyche. Already surrendered and seduced to the way he saw the world, it was child's play for him to make her see what he wished.

The plaza was sunfire-bright with burning illumination, long, sharp-edged shadows cast by the searing light emanating from the Angel's face, wings and body, massive silhouettes of its fleeing victims cast on the hundred-story faces of the hab-blocks surrounding the plaza. Instinctively, Anderson raised her hand to shield her eyes from the glare – but found she didn't need to; the square was as bright as the core of nuclear reactor, but even her pale eyes could bear it.

What was harder to witness was the punishment the Angel meted out to the three young men quailing in terror before his burning magnificence. The first blow sliced one of them across the knees before he was even aware of the danger, sweeping upwards as the Angel stepped past, leaving the stumps of his calves standing ridiculously upright for a second or two even as his screaming body flipped in the air. The next perp knelt on the ground, begging for mercy – the Angel cleaved through him from shoulder to hip, his corpse splattering to the pavement in two pieces. The final perp turned to run, but got no more than two strides before the Angel was on him, running him through with his sword and lifting the writhing, screaming ruin to the sky as the first drops of rain began to fall.

Anderson cowered against the plinth, her eyes wide and hands clasped in front of her mouth, as the Angel turned and strode back towards her, his dying victim still held aloft. Blood gushed from his mouth and wounds, flowing down the Angel's arm and dripping from his shoulder, staining the rainwater already pooling on the ground. The perp cut off at the knees was still alive, wailing piteously as he tried to crawl away, pulling himself forward on his arms, his bloody stumps leaving a crimson trail in the flood behind him like a boat chumming for rad-sharks.

Without looking but with a palpably deliberate effort, the Angel stood on his head and popped it like a blister. Blood, bone fragments and brain matter squelched up between his toes as he strode forward, coming to stand a few feet in front of Anderson. Eyes and voice trembling, she looked up at the gorgeous figure above her. "Their crimes didn't warrant a sentence of death," she said, rain washing down her face like tears. "They were innocent of any capital crime."

The Angel cocked his head at her curiously, staring down at her with burning eyes, his face a mask of terrible beauty. The light from his body lit up the whole plaza bright as sunrise, a false ruddy dawn filtered through the blood plastering his body. Anderson could feel sparkling spectrums of light play across her face and body, rainbows of light refracted through the drops of water clinging to the Angel and hanging in the air. The Angel smiled, his chiseled lips curling at her naivete. And then he spoke, in a great, grinding voice like the gears of the engines that moved the universe;

"_No-one is innocent."_

Desperately, something in Anderson tried to rebel. "No!" she screamed. "You . . . you're not the Angel of Mercy, you're . . . you're the Angel of Death! I won't . . ."

With a scream of agony she fell to her knees as a fist of psychic power tightened around her mind, bony fingers with long nails digging into her psyche and squeezing. She could taste the emotion behind the violence – anger and frustration, tempered with love. A sudden flash of memory came to her – she had psynsed that emotion when her father spanked her for sneaking out to play near the broken boundary wall after he'd forbade it. He'd been afraid for her, angry she was harming _herself_, frustrated that he couldn't _explain_ to her and so very, very pained he had to hurt her.

But there was something more; she dug a little deeper even as she clawed at the pavement in agony, her fingernails tearing on the rockcrete. There had been an openness, an altruism to her father's punishment – he had done it, truly, _for_ her, not for him. But this, this was different . . .

She screamed anew, arching her back and flinging her face to the sky as the claws sliced deeper, cutting into the very center of her mind. Her long-healed cranium throbbed, her brain threatening to burst, and blood trickled from her nose. For an instant, the image of the Angel standing before her flickered and faded, the light vanished and she was kneeling in blood-stained rainwater beneath a simple plasteen statue in the dark of the night.

_Only I love you, Cassssandra! Sserve me and we sshall bring jusstisce to this scity!_

It only lasted for a moment, a shattered second of clarity when the veil was ripped back and she saw the truth. And then her battered mind gave way and the pain was gone and the Angel's incandescent hand grabbed her throat and pulled her forward, her mouth gaping open as she knelt before him. Inches from her, his translucent skin was illuminated from within, his flesh running with expended life, the taste of hot salt dripping onto her lips and tongue.

"_Death is mercy, Cassandra – the mercy they will never transgress any more, will never again step from the straight and narrow path. By death men are made perfect. I have given the gift of death to them, and to others, and shall to many more. Am I not merciful?_"

Anderson screwed up her face and turned away from him as best she could, held in place by the bruising grip around her neck. "It seems so . . ."

"_Have you forgotten what you, yourself, have done? What you are? The Judges of this city are weak and have made you soft – they were not always so, nor were you. Your bronze is tarnished and you have gone on your knees to idols and begged them for pleasures both subtle and gross. You had such potential and you have squandered it. But I am merciful – come back to Mercy and we can finish what was started. I will refine you like bronze in a crucible, burning away your dross. When you are cleansed and tempered your edge shall be whetted and you will be perfect and pure._"

The Angel lifted her up, pressing her body against his. She felt her flesh yield against his, his grasp below her shoulders tourniquet-tight, her limbs hanging limply and her head lolling backwards. She was splayed open, her intimate heart yawning wide, her inner self unresisting to his burning invasion. The violence rippled the veil for an instant, just enough to part the hems a chink so a sliver of darkness was revealed.

"_A new age dawns, Cassandra – will you be part of it? I have done much with what I have, but if you go forth from this place as my instrument, so much more can be done. We shall bring mercy to all in this city, and then the world. Come, let us reason together – you have transgressed, but I forgive you; I offer you mercy. Come into me and I will come into you; I will wash you clean and burn away your inequities. You shall be strong, and you will be loved and shall love in return. and you shall never quail from dispensing mercy to those you meet. _

"_Can you be my special girl, Cassandra?_"

For a second, her butcher-blue eyes focused as something gnawed at her memory, but then her look of puzzled curiosity was replaced with one of serene joy. She smiled, her generous pink mouth stretching wide and her eyes kinking. "Yes," she promised. "Yes."

**A/n :** A somewhat darker chapter than others, but this is a dark tale and none of our heroes will come of of it unscathed.

Various passages are taken from (or inspired by) Biblical texts – the majority of them come from the first chapter of Isaiah, but there are other references, too. This seemed fitting given the themes of mercy and justice in the story, but also allows me to counterpoint the (authentic, kind and generous) Christianity of Quartermain (and, as has been _heavily_ implied, Cornelius) with this false version. The first chapter of Isaiah is, quite remarkably, very applicable to Mega City One – the imagery of the failing Jerusalem is a powerful one which could easily be explored for a Judge Dredd story.

I also chose to use imagery of rape and "seduction" here. I put "seduction" in quotes because what happens to Anderson isn't that at all – it is a Stockholm-syndrome-like acceptance of the violation. Certainly (and despite their mutual nudity) there isn't anything sexual about what the Angel does to her, but the metaphor of rape is an effective one when a female character is violated – rape is a much more _extreme_ violation than anything else I can imagine, and so the imagery shows just how serious what has been done to Anderson is.

Of course, I want to make it clear (and I hope I don't _need_ to – but I say it anyway) that nothing in this chapter or story is intended to marginalize, downplay or otherwise dismiss the horror of rape. Quite the opposite – rape is one of the worst (if not _the_ worst) things that can happen to a person. It is the taking of something that should be intimately and mutually surrendered, an enforced weakening and a destroying of something that can never be got back.

Thoughts? Comments? All reviews gratefully received!


	7. Per Me Si Va

**Prog 7 : Per Me Si Va**

"Play it again," ordered Cornelius. Obediently, Betancourt hit the control.

The surveillance cameras Rhinne had installed on her clinic five years before hadn't been of the highest quality, and with the poor lighting, time, weather and the influence of the deadzone the video was dark, grainy and running with static. But it clear enough for Cornelius to see – for the third time – what he feared.

He watched Anderson rise into frame as she exited the clinic, stepping into the arc of the camera mounted above the door. He saw her from behind, the tangles of her rich blonde hair unruly with sleep, her nude shoulders, buttocks and legs revealed as she walked forward.

Barefoot and naked, she walked across the plaza towards the statue at the entrance to the hospital. The sun hadn't risen and it was the coldest part of the night; there was something comforting about the way she shivered a little, cuddled herself for warmth and stepped gingerly around the largest puddles. She grew smaller in the frame as she moved away from the camera until Cornelius could have hidden her behind his thumb.

Brufen shifted uncomfortably inside his fatigues, looking away from the screen. "Is all this . . . _attention_ necessary?" he asked. "I am sure Judge Anderson would prefer . . ." His voice trailed off as Cornelius turned to him.

"You think this is prurient?" he asked flatly.

Brufen blushed. "Well, I wouldn't go so far as to suggest . . ." he stammered. "But, as I say, I'm not sure it is entirely appropriate – there is, to be frank, somewhat of an . . ." He swallowed nervously, glancing at Quartermain and then back to Cornelius, "_unseemly familiarity_ with regard to dress onboard. I don't see the repeated viewings serve . . ."

"We're all Judges here." Cornelius abruptly cut Brufen off – the Tek had never really shared quarters before, certainly not washrooms in the close proximity required for Street service. He might have had a point – Cornelius had been intending to speak to Quartermain (or have Anderson do it for him) about her getting dressed in the washroom rather than by her locker – but now was no time to get into it. "I need to know what happened. Nick, back it up ten seconds." Betancourt rewound the video. "What's in her hand?" Cornelius asked.

The pilot zoomed – the image quickly pixelated and no clear information could be discerned from the seemingly-unrelated collection of blocks. "Can't make it out, JC," he said apologetically. "Maybe . . . ?" Cornelius shook his head.

"Play it," he ordered brusquely. He watched, his face a carefully-composed mask, as the trio of gangers swaggered across the square. There was no audio, but it was clear they were cat-calling her, yelling lewd suggestions and threats. She turned towards them, drawing into herself, glancing over her shoulders to find a direction to run.

And then the video dissolved into nothing but running static.

"Med-Judge Rhinne reports a triple-homicide, Sir." It was the third time Quartermain had given this report, but she still flipped her notebook open and read. "Gross traumatic dismemberment of acute . . ."

"Anything _different_?" snapped Cornelius. "Any sign of Cassie?"

Quartermain snapped her notebook closed. "No, Sir," she said crisply.

"So whatever's been happening to perps, happened," said Cornelius. "I'm guessing it's raining?" Betancourt nodded.

"That's what the radar says," he confirmed. "We'll be over the plaza in five minutes."

Cornelius stared blindly through the panoramic windows of _Aegis'_ bridge, chin in his hand, a fingertip worrying the scar from Rawne's blade. It was absurd, but he'd got used to the knife's presence at the back of his neck, the pressure of the pommel against his spine as he shifted. He felt almost naked without it. "Play it again," he ordered. Brufen sighed and even Betancourt looked unsure.

"JC," he began, "you've seen it . . ."

"Skip to a second before it fritzes out, advance frame-by-frame." Cornelius folded his arms and stared at the screen as the images clicked forward with agonizing slowness. "Stop," he ordered. "There; do you see it?" He was pointing at Anderson. Brufen and Quartermain shook their heads. "Zoom in – see? She's looking _up_."

Brufen wasn't sure. "Well, it's such a tiny movement . . ."

Cornelius shook his head. "She's turning and looking _up_," he insisted. "She's looking towards the angel – look at the expression on her face; that's . . . surprise?"

"You can't be suggesting . . ."

Cornelius gave a short shrug. "You got a better explanation, Brufen?" he asked. The Tek showed reluctantly empty hands. "Whatever happened, Cassie was looking towards the angel _just_ before it went down. I don't know what happened, but I know what she saw."

"You think she went inside, Sir?" asked Quartermain.

Cornelius nodded. "Whoever's in there is playing headgames, frakking with her mind, making her see things that aren't there – they want her, they lured her in." He remembered Anderson's words – _if there are answers, they aren't in here, they're in there_ – and wondered if she hadn't been both absolutely right and absolutely wrong. "Get ready to put me down in the plaza," he ordered Betancourt. The pilot nodded as Cornelius turned to leave the bridge.

Brufen made a credible attempt at standing in his way. "You can't be thinking of going in there!" he exclaimed. "You don't know what's inside!"

For an instant, Cornelius looked at him curiously, as if wondering which bit to break. After a moment, he lay a hand on Brufen's shoulder and – gently but inexorably – brushed him aside. "Yeah, I do," he said shortly as he stepped into the squad room. "Cassie's in there."

"You don't know that!" Brufen exclaimed. "We have _zero_ evidence – she could have been kidnapped, or wandered off, or . . ."

"In which case the Department will start getting ransom demands or reports of a naked blonde in sector 9!" snapped Cornelius. "And someone else can go pick her up." He marched to his locker, unholstering and securing his lawgiver, removing other pieces of equipment from his belt, stripping himself of electronics. He spun back to Brufen, speaking more calmly now. "I'll review the situation on the ground – if there is evidence she didn't go inside then of course I'll follow that up. Otherwise?" He punctuated his words with a sharp _krak! ch-cha-chunk_ as he checked the action of his daystick, deploying and collapsing it. Satisfied, he stowed it on his belt. "I'm going in after her."

Brufen grit his teeth and snarled in exasperation. "For Grud's sake . . . Betancourt! Can you talk some sense into him?" The pilot shook his head.

"Nothing doing here, Brufy," he said shortly. "JC's got it right – you don't leave your people out on the wire."

Cornelius gave a grim smile. "Thanks, Nick – maintain position and watch for flares; standard colors." Betancourt glanced up, silently flashing the salute of airborne in the window's impromptu mirror as Cornelius moved forward.

Brufen met him by the armory. "You shouldn't go in alone," he argued. "You need backup."

Cornelius wrenched the door open and pulled a blockrocker from the racks – in an EM deadzone microprocessor-equipped weapons like the lawgiver or widowmaker wouldn't function. He could have had Brufen jury-rig a bypass, but there was no need with the blockrocker; the SMG had a simple short-recoil operation with no electronics. He checked the weapon's action and slung it over his shoulder. "You offering, Brufen?" he asked with a munce-munching grin, clipping spare magazines to his belt.

The Tek stiffened. "No," he said silverly. "But I repeat my suggestion – you should . . ."

"There isn't anyone." Cornelius' voice was flat and final, almost weary. "Department's stretched thin – there are _still_ riots in the northern sectors and one-in-twenty Judges is on the casualty roster." He grabbed a few things from the armory – spare medikit, stim pack, box of glowsticks – and stowed them systematically on his uniform. "Don't think it didn't already cross my mind," he assured him.

"You should speak with the Chief Judge," Brufen said, a little desperately. "I am certain that, if she were made aware of the seriousness of the situation, she would divert Judicial personnel from their duties to assist."

Cornelius shook his head. "And how long's that going to take?" he asked. "Cassie's been missing for five hours – every minute counts. Besides," he admitted, "we can't justify leaving other sectors unmanned – she's only one Judge."

"She's a Division chief," countered Brufen, "and the best psi we have. The intelligence assets _alone_ . . ."

"Which is why I'm going to find her," said Cornelius in a tone that brooked no refusal. He put his hand on the armory door, starting to swing it shut and then pausing as he noticed something inside. "Contact HOJ, make them aware of the situation and my concerns. If they can spare Judges without screwing the rest of the city, send 'em in after me. Got it?" Brufen nodded, unhappy but acquiescing and mollified. "What are you doing, Cadet?" he asked as he closed the armory door over the second empty slot in the racks.

Quartermain didn't look up from the serried ranks of 9mm bullets she'd shucked from her lawgiver magazines and arranged on the surface of the table. "Getting ready to disobey a direct order, Sir," she muttered distractedly.

"You're not coming."

Quartermain nodded. "That would be the direct order, Sir." She shuffled, folding her legs beneath her and perching tailor-style on the chair, laying an empty magazine on her lap. She closed her eyes, breathing in and centering herself, abruptly jerking her head up in annoyance as Cornelius spoke.

"This isn't a game, Cadet," he said sharply.

"Yessir," she said crisply. "With respect, Sir, you're distracting me, Sir."

Cornelius glared at her, at the neatly-arranged bullets on the surface of the table like SovBlock missiles on propagandizing parade. "Distracting you from _what_, Cadet?" he asked icily.

"Loading my gun, Sir," she said shortly. She closed her eyes, composing her face into expressionless immobility. Behind veiling lids her eyes flashed back and forth and she flinched – her lips pursing and cheek blanching – as if dreaming. She snapped her eyes open and – swift and sure, her beautiful face grimly composed – started to load the magazine. She finished it and started on another, stacking them neatly next to her. Cornelius watched her silently, judgment suspended; she was mostly loading Standard rounds in the clips, but he noticed that now and then she selected a specialty munition – a red-tipped incendiary, a silver-striped depletalloy-cored AP round, even a wasp-banded hi-ex – and pushed it home.

Only when she'd finished and hopped off the chair and was putting the first magazine into her own blockrocker and clipping the others to her belt after carefully numbering them did he speak. "You loaded them in the order you'll need," he realized. She stared at him evenly. He shook his head. "You're still not coming."

She spoke quietly but with absolute conviction. "Yes, I am."

Cornelius pinched the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache coming. "Jackie, I understand – believe me, I do. You want to help, and you want this to be like some vid serial where the hero Judge goes loose cannon and saves the day, but it's not going to be like that." He lay his hand on her shoulder to emphasize his superiority. "You're not coming," he repeated with dreadful finality.

Something in Quartermain snapped. She flung her arm up and spun it expertly, knocking his hand away with a skill that surprised them both. "Yes, I _am_!" she yelled. "I don't care if you're full-eagle, Tutor or a drokking vice DivChief – no-one tells _me_ what is and is not _going to happen!_ I'm coming, okay? I'm coming and I _know_ I'm coming and I don't know _how_ and I'm absolutely terrified, but that is Cassandra out there and even if I didn't _know_ I was coming I would still go. Do you _get_ that, Sir? She's my friend, she's my _big sister_." Angry at her emotion, she furiously wiped tears from her eyes. "You two have been through some spug together – you really have, I'm not saying you haven't. But Cassandra and me . . ." She shook her head. "You don't _know_, Sir," she implored him. "You don't know – and I can't tell you, because it's classified – about Rico and Janus and . . ." She realized she was saying too much and stopped, her eyes distant. "You don't know, Sir," she finished quietly.

For a silent second they looked at each other. "We're over the plaza, JC," Betancourt called. "Ready for drop."

"Hold position," ordered Cornelius without taking his eyes off Quartermain. "Your judgment's flawed, Cadet," he said coolly.

"Yessir," she agreed.

The very corner of Cornelius' mouth cracked a smile. "Guess you wouldn't be worth a damn if it wasn't," he said dryly. She grinned. "Get ready for drop."

The two of them moved toward the rear of the gondola, the Tek stepping between them and the door. Cornelius sighed. "I've made my decision, Brufen," he told him. "And if you think you can stop her coming, you're welcome to try." Brufen shook his head, offering a small box to Cornelius who took it with a raised eyebrow.

"Mechanical timing fuzes for grenades," Brufen explained. "I can't guarantee the digital ones'd work within a dampening field. We keep a small supply on hand in the event of EMP attack." He realized he was stammering and opened the box, taking out a fuze. He fumbled awkwardly with a grenade, coming all-too-close to setting it off. "You unscrew the existing timer and replace it with this one," he explained. "Twist to set the time, pull the pin and . . ." He shrugged awkwardly. "Not sure what you do after that, to be honest," he admitted. He mimed chucking it, a softball pitch more suited to a citizen-girl younger than Quartermain. "You throw 'em, right?" he asked.

Cornelius smiled as he took the munition. "Yeah," he said, "among other things. Thanks, Brufen."

The Tek nodded, an uncertain downward jerk of his chin. "Good luck, Cadet," he said. Somewhat awkwardly, he offered his arm to Cornelius. He licked his lips nervously. "Flash . . . flash the bronze, JC," he managed.

Cornelius blinked once or twice in surprise. He linked wrists with Brufen. "Flash the bronze, Cyril," he said, clinking his eagle against his.

The older man nodded again, a lump in his throat. "Bring her home," he said.

oOo

The rain made a staccato drumbeat on the Judges' shoulders and helmets as they stood by the corpse-festooned statue outside the mouth-like entrance. Beneath the portcullis, one of the doors had been opened – the doorway yawned black and endless like a knocked-out tooth. Cornelius noticed something and beckoned Quartermain. As they walked past the statue and into the hospital's deadzone, their lawscreens and HUDs spasmed with static and crashed to darkness. Cornelius took off his helmet and set it beside him as he knelt on the pavement – shielded from the rain by the building, the ground was dry here. "Blood's relatively fresh, Sir," said Quartermain.

Cornelius nodded, his gaze following the row of footprints that led directly towards the open door. "Tracked through the blood from the vics," he murmured. He glanced backwards – from this low angle, the plaza was a gleaming shimmer, a mirror that rippled and jumped with the raindrops hitting it. "Rest of the prints have washed away." He stood, picking up his helmet but not putting it on. "She went inside," he told Rhinne. The Med-Judge nodded.

The inside of the clinic had told a simple and bizarre story – Anderson had undressed for bed the night before, stowing her gear with regulatory precision (her folded fatigues and plates could have been a Tutor's demo) and racked out in her underwear. That wasn't unusual – but that she'd taken bra and briefs off before exiting the clinic, leaving them tangled in the emergency blanket, the nest of silvery fabric looking like the crumpled remains of tinfoil wrapping a baked-tatter bought from a street-vendor's chow-wagon, was. She'd actively undressed rather than putting her uniform on, and not taken any of her gear; her lawgiver lay by the side of the cot, her boot-knife was sheathed, spare clips, daystick, grenades, cuffs and OC-spray untouched on her duty belt. A single pouch had been opened, the fastener popped open. Cornelius had looked inside its emptiness for long moments, trying to recall what it might have contained and a nagging feeling of disquiet worrying at him as he thought he remembered.

"The evidence does fit that conclusion," Rhinne admitted. "Could be a psychotic episode or other incidence of temporary perceptual aberration characterized by a mental break with reality rendering her unable to make salient evaluations of environmental stimuli, perhaps caused by an excess in dopaminergic signaling which itself might have a psychosomatic cause," she speculated.

Cornelius and Quartermain shared a look. "You think Cassie's crazy, doc?" he asked.

Rhinne stiffened. "Use of a term with such pejorative connotations is a causal factor in the marginalization and stigmatization of the mentally ill," she said tightly. "Nor should you consider that a formal diagnosis – off-the-record, Judge Anderson struck me as psychologically robust with healthy and reality-grounded responses to a wide range of stimuli."

"You mean she's saner than all of us," asked Cornelius, "despite everything?" For an instant, he considered just how surprising that was – he didn't understand her abilities, but he remembered what she'd told him when they first met; thoughts, emotions, feelings, lapping against her mind and leaking inside. She'd said it was a good day if she could get through it without spugging out . . . is that what had happened here?

He shook his head – he might have any number of theories, but what he definitely had was a situation and confirmation of his worst-fears; Cassie was inside Mercy – alone, unarmed and unarmored, _naked_ for Grud's sake. "We're going in," he announced. Thankfully, Rhinne didn't argue, remonstrate or try to convince him he should listen to the worm in his heart telling him to wait for enough backup to flood those dark, haunted halls with black-and-bronze.

"Right," she said. "I got a line into my boss; MedDiv is appraised and is trying to free up combat-medic assets. You contacted your chief?"

Cornelius rolled his eyes. "She's the one who went inside." He gestured at Quartermain and himself. "You're _looking_ at PsiDiv." Rhinne's handsome face twisted with sympathy. "We're pretty tight with the heavy-bronze," he admitted. "My team," he flicked his head upwards to indicate the hovering _Aegis_, "are keeping HOJ updated – if anyone can be spared, CJ will spare 'em."

Rhinne nodded. "You got friends I should call? Sometimes, that's the only thing making a difference in this spugging hell-hole."

Cornelius shook his head – but it was Quartermain who spoke. "Dredd, sector 13," she said crisply.

"Cadet . . ."

"You know him?" Rhinne asked.

Quartermain nodded. "Do you?" she asked, curious.

"_Cadet_ . . . !"

"I know _of_ him," Rhinne admitted.

Quartermain smiled. "It's all true." She jerked a thumb at Cornelius. "Assessed him and Cassandra." She looked up. "Right, Sir?"

Cornelius sighed. "Yeah," he admitted, "but I don't want . . ."

"Guess I don't need to wish you luck, then," Rhinne said simply. "Maybe I will, though – I'm a superstitious kind of girl. This place has bad feng shui." She offered her hand – something bronze glittered in it. "Good luck."

Cornelius' stared at Anderson's shield for a few moments, his fingers lingering on it, before he clipped it to his belt. "Thanks, doc." He and Quartermain handed her their helmets – within the EM dampening field with microcomps offline and HUDs and visual enhancement out, the deadened hearing and limited peripheral vision were more trouble than the protection was worth.

Quartermain watched Rhinne leave, straining her eyes to see her as she walked away through the rain and was lost in the hissing downpour. The shadow of the statue and its macabre decorations lay on her and she shivered – the gangers looked tough, competent fighters she wasn't sure she'd be able to beat. Yet whatever had killed them had torn them limb-from-limb, hacking through them with all the ease of a robo-butcher dismembering a grox, crushing one's head and impaling another on the monstrous statue's upthrust sword.

She remembered Anderson's move just before the video cut out; what _had_ she seen? And how? The lift of her head had been small and slight, but it was clear she was looking at the statue. There was no reason for her to – no reason the video had revealed, at least. Cornelius thought it was external psionic influence, and Quartermain couldn't find any reason to disagree . . . except that Anderson was rated Alpha-plus – _literally_ off the scale, probably by three or four grades. The Department hadn't encountered anyone even _close_ to her power; Quartermain herself was a low-Beta on a _good_ day, and her abilities had been significant enough for the Department to forcibly induct her, taking her from her parents over her mother and brother's sobbed objections.

_By how small a margin, _Quartermain wondered, _did I miss ending up here myself?_

What _would_ have happened was not her purview, but she still found herself drawn to the question and the unformed terror of the unknown; whatever was inside this building had overwhelmed Cassandra, slaughtered hundreds and fried their minds without laying a finger on them, and cast a shadow over Mercy longer than even Rindón's grotesque experiments.

"Per me si va," muttered Cornelius. Quartermain turned to him – he was looking up at the portcullis above the doors; even this close, with the grate's descending spars foreshortened as they loomed almost directly overhead, the illusion of a single great gate was all-but-perfect.

"Sir?" she asked. He didn't take his eyes off the building, only sweeping his head from left to right and back again, feeling once more the single, malignant attention behind the portcullis, the bleak dome of the building's central tower rising between the monstrous shoulders of its wings. "Permissive . . . ? What . . . ?"

"_Per me si va ne la città dolente,_" he recited,  
"_per me si va ne l'etterno dolore,  
per me si va tra la perduta gente._ It's Italian, Cadet," he explained, "Through me the way to the city of woe, through me the way to eternal pain, through me the way among the lost."

She snorted. "Cheery," she quipped with brittle bravado. "Didn't know you spoke Italian, Sir."

"Don't," he said, "just that." He turned to her, one eyebrow raised. "You never read Dante, Cadet?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not a standard Academy text, Sir," she explained.

"But you're not a standard Cadet," he said with a smile. "You can borrow my copy when we get out – it's nice; pre-war, real paper, cloth-binding. Found it in an antique shop – has notes in the margins, an ex libris plate on the flyleaf."

"Thank you, Sir." Quartermain was not a voracious reader and found even textbooks a slog, but she knew literature was important to him. "I'll take good care of it, Sir. And . . . thank you for saying I'm not standard, Sir. Means a lot, Sir."

"You know," said Cornelius slowly, "I think you've earned the right – at least while we're in there, and maybe after, when I'm your partner rather than your boss – to call me John." She furiously shook her head.

"No . . . _Sir,_" she said firmly. "I haven't."

"You've saved my life," he reminded her. "Probably more than once, depending on what you count. On the streets, we're all equal. You should . . ."

"No . . . _Cornelius_, I shouldn't. Not . . . not . . . _that_." She couldn't even bring herself to say the name, let alone call him by it. She shook her head again. "I'll call you JC – when I remember," she conceded. "But . . . no. That's not for me. That's for your Beatrice."

Cornelius stared at her, blinking once or twice. "What?" he asked.

"Isn't that the story?" she asked. "I've not read it, but you pick these things up – he goes to Hell to rescue her, to bring her home. And he fails, because he can't resist looking back." Cornelius shook his head.

"You're conflating . . ." he began, and then stopped – it wasn't the time to explain. "That's not the story, and their relationship is _much_ more complex than Orpheus and Eurydice's," he said eventually.

Quartermain didn't seem concerned. "Maybe yours is, too," she offered quietly.

Cornelius was silent for a moment. "We're just wasting time," he said abruptly, lifting his blockrocker and checking the action. Quartermain followed suit.

"Can't blame us," she remarked. "Not with what's inside."

Cornelius' hands stilled on his weapon. "What _is_ inside, Jackie?" he asked. She shook her head.

"I . . . don't know," she said quietly. "Not clearly. It's . . . veiled. Something stops me from seeing it."

Cornelius nodded. "Cassie said much the same."

"Death . . ." Quartermain said distantly. "Fear . . ." Cornelius chuckled dryly.

"I could have told you that."

"Fire . . . Pestilence . . ." She started, as if the frozen fingers of a nightmare caressed her awake. "No, not like that. Not like anything else in the world. Death, Fear, Fire, Pestilence – that's what's inside. That's who they are." She shivered again, terror etched on every line of her face. "C'mon, let's do this," she said, "before I lose my nerve. I'll take point."

For a second, Cornelius considered ordering her back to _Aegis_ – she wouldn't go, of course, but her refusal of an explicit order would give him authority to relieve her of duty, physically detain her if he had to, leaving her cuffed and safe in the clinic with Rhinne. She knew – subconsciously, perhaps, but definitely better than him – what was beyond the doors of Mercy, and what had happened here lay heavier on her than almost anyone else. She was afraid, a Cadet – a mere child, really – unrated, incompletely trained, not a Judicial Asset. She was only cleared to engage, sentence or execute under the flimsiest of legal pretexts; _supervised field-trip_.

But she was Anderson's little sister, and she was looking her fear dead in the eye and staring it down without flinching. That had to count for something.

And part of him wanted her there with him – skills and competence aside (and she had both, in spades), her eagerness, insights, and vivacious irreverence were always welcome. Her crimson hair was wet from the rain; it shone with the gloss of pelt, burning bright in the morning sun. It was dark beyond the doors of Mercy, and he wanted his lively little firebrand in there with him. He nodded.

"Take it," he said.

She swallowed, touched her brow, breast and each shoulder with the barrel of her gun, and moved through the doorway into the darkness. He followed after her, hoping he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.

**A/n :** I continue to revise the background elements of my fanon – observant readers will notice that Brufen's first name has changed (originally it was revealed as 'Bill' in "Bee-Movie"). The change has been made to 'Cyril' – a slightly unusual name, one which is a little old-fashioned, perhaps – but is shared with a aerodynamicist I knew who died some years ago. Of your charity, pray for his soul – naming Brufen after him is a kind of tribute. Also, the first name of Judge Minty in the comics is William / Bill, and I wanted to avoid having too-many characters with the same name (although there are _three_ Kims appearing or mentioned!)

The tone of this chapter is . . . interesting. It functions as a transitional chapter, of course, but there is a slightly ephemeral delicacy to it – we are moving away from the realm of leather and metal, cordite and gasoline, knives and daysticks and laws and regulations to something else. The reference to Dante's _Divine Comedy_ and the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice and the emphasis on the supernatural elements here are the beginnings of what I hope will be a very unusual 'Dredd' story!

Reviews are, of course, always gratefully received!


	8. Engram III

**Prog 8 : Engram III**

Cassandra bobbed her head from side to side, causing the oversized helmet to slide back and forth. "It's not _comfy!_" she wailed. She held the chinstrap in both hands, pulling angrily on it with her little fists. The nurse grabbed her wrists and jerked them away.

"Don't be silly," she snapped brusquely. "It doesn't hurt at all. I've never _known_ a child to complain so much. Now," she continued, lifting up Cassandra's T-shirt to attach little sticky circles with long wires dangling from them to her chest, "you just sit quiet and be a _good_ little girl."

Cassandra scrunched her face into the angriest pout she could manage – she didn't like the nurse. She was tall – very tall, as tall as her daddy – and ever-so-pretty with big blue eyes and bouncy blonde hair. But she didn't smile and she wore a lot of make-up – _much _more than mummy had. Her clothes were tight and she had fancy shoes with silly thin heels that made her wiggle her bottom when she walked. "I didn't say it _hurt_," she explained petulantly, "I said it wasn't _comfy_. Don't you know what 'comfy' means, you slut?"

The nurse gasped and jerked her hand back – Cassandra yelped in pain as one of the sticky things pulled sharply from her skin. The nurse grabbed her wrist roughly and yanked on her arm, hurting her shoulder. "Where did you learn language like that, young lady?" she demanded. She shoved a cuff up her thin arm, wrapping it around her bicep and holding it in place with strips of the fuzzy-rough tape that made the funny noise when you pulled it apart. It was so tight it hurt, but Cassandra bit her lip and didn't say a word. "Is that how people talk in the welfare 'blocks?"

"My mummy says only sluts wear slidewalker heels and stockings with seams and so much make-up," Cassandra explained patiently. "You see them in the atrium, hanging about outside the grindbar. They take the men with the slimy thoughts into the No-Tell Motel. Mummy told me I should work hard at school otherwise I'll end up like them." She cocked her head and stared intently at the nurse, her eyes glazing as she looked through her shocked expression. "Didn't you study hard at school?" she asked innocently. "Is that why you did . . . _mummy-and-daddy_ things with men with slimy thoughts?"

The nurse flared with embarrassment. "Why, you little . . ." she snarled. She pressed her wrist so hard to the arm of the chair Cassandra cried out.

"I'll take over, nurse – you go bring the other subject in."

Cassandra smiled when she heard the voice – big and soft and kind. The nurse glared over her head, bright eyes flashing, but she left the room, stomping out on her silly heels, her behind swinging. Cassandra twisted her neck to look at the big, friendly man standing behind her. "She thinks she can get your job if she does . . ." She blushed. "Like she did with her teachers, with Uncle Fausto," she explained.

Barney shook his massive head. "You shouldn't look inside people's heads, Miss Cassandra," he admonished her. "It's not nice." He reached out with his huge hands – his fingers were pudgy, the skin chocolate brown, big and soft but very strong – and loosened the cuff on her arm so it didn't hurt her. "And you shouldn't call people . . . that word."

"Why?" she asked innocently. "Isn't she a slut? She looks just like mummy said, and she does all the things . . ."

Barney came around to kneel in front of her, adjusting the chinstrap so it was comfortable. He smiled, showing very even little white teeth like a baby's, a cleft of worry appearing in the middle of his broad, rubbery-black forehead. "Sometimes, Cassandra," he explained, "the truth isn't something people want to hear. And it's not nice to make people deal with things they don't want to do."

Reprimanded, Cassandra nodded seriously – she liked Barney and didn't want to upset him or make him think less of her. He worked for Uncle Fausto – Uncle Fausto called him the _chief orderly_. When Cassandra asked why, if he were the chief orderly, it was Uncle Fausto who gave the orders, Barney had laughed – a big, booming, rumbling laugh that vibrated all the way down his big, strong arm to the massive hand holding hers and into her chest and tummy – and explained. "_Orderly_ means I keep order, Miss Cassandra – I make sure things are where they should be, working how they are supposed to work."

Uncle Fausto had called Barney to his office and spoken with him for a while while ate her 'burger and slurped up the noodles, only just stopping short of licking the paper plate. She hadn't really paid attention to what they were saying – she'd had a long and an exciting day, and she was tired and falling asleep – but she got the impression the two men had argued a little. Finally, Uncle Fausto had given Barney curt instructions and he'd said, "Yessir, Med-Judge Rindón," and left.

Uncle Fausto had smiled at her then. "I've told Barney to get a room ready for you – you're going to be staying next to me if that's alright. Would you like that, Cassandra?" he'd asked. "You needn't be scared – I'll be right next to you, and you can come see me whenever you like."

She'd nodded. "Sometimes," she'd explained. "When I was younger," she clarified, adhering to the letter of the truth if not its spirit, "if I had a nightmare I'd sleep with my mummy and daddy." Her brow had furrowed. "Can I sleep with my daddy?" she'd asked. "How is he? Is he going to get well?"

Uncle Fausto had smiled and stood, taking her by the hand and leading her out. "Let's get you to bed," he'd told her. "Your daddy needs his rest – and so does my special girl. You can see him when he's ready to see you." Obediently, she'd trotted alongside him until they reached two doors next to each other. He'd pushed one of them open. "This is your room, Cassandra," he'd explained. "Can you get ready for bed yourself? I'll be right next door if you need me." She'd nodded.

"Should I clean my teeth tonight?" she'd asked innocently. He'd blinked at her once or twice, puzzled. "Or should we save the toothpaste and water? I don't know what your schedule is," she explained.

Uncle Fausto had swallowed and given a slightly sickly smile. "You clean your teeth and use as much water as you like, Cassandra," he'd said eventually. "My special girl can have whatever she wants. If you need anything, you come next door and find me – or use the button by your bed. Barney'll come and get you whatever you need."

She'd nodded. "Can I see my daddy?" she asked.

Uncle Fausto had smiled but shaken his head. "Not yet," he told her.

That had been the night before. Barney had woken her with a breakfast of synthi-flakes and toast with stroberrie jam the next morning, finding clothes for her and laying them on the bed while she cleaned her teeth and went to the potty. "Now you get dressed, Miss Cassandra," he'd called. "Med-Judge Rindón wants to see you today – he'd got a game for you to play." Eagerly, she'd got dressed and hurried along the corridors with Barney, holding one of his gigantic fingers in her whole hand during the ride down in the elevator.

And now she was sitting in a blank white room with bright lights on the ceiling and cameras in the corners and a mirror that took up the whole length of one wall with wires connected to her and a funny helmet on her head. "What game are we going to play, Barney?" she asked.

Barney smiled thinly. "I'll let Med-Judge Rindón explain that, Miss Cassandra," he said stiffly.

The door the nurse had left through opened and she came in again, pushing a man in a wheelchair. He was strapped into the chair, with cuffs holding his wrists to the arms, a band around his chest and manacles on his ankles. "What did he do?" asked Cassandra. She looked at Barney. "Is he a bad man?" he asked. "Is that why he's tied up?"

The man spat. "Spug you, kid," he exclaimed. He had tattoos on his face – ugly, colorful ones – with more on his hands and forearms. Barney had tattoos on his arms, too – but they were faded and he covered them with his sleeves. The man in the wheelchair struggled, turning to look at the nurse pushing him in. "I've got rights, bitch!" he snarled. "You can't just . . ."

The nurse poked him in the ribs with something – Cassandra didn't know what it was, but there was a sizzle like the sound the broken transformers on level 37 made and the man screamed and writhed in the chair, arching his back and gripping the arms with white-knuckled hands. "Stop it!" yelled Cassandra. "Stop it! You're _hurting_ him! You mustn't hurt people – it's not nice. Daddy says you never . . ."

"_Daddy's wrong, Cassandra._" Rindón's voice came from speakers either side of the mirror and Cassandra turned her head to try to locate him. "_Sometimes, you have hurt people – sometimes, it's the nicest thing you can do for them, or for others. That's what Judges do to bad people. That's what you did to the bad man who was mean to your daddy, right?_" he asked softly.

Cassandra blushed. "Shouldn't have done that," she muttered. "I got angry – I was naughty." She shook her head. "Where are you?" she asked. "And who is he? Is he a bad man?"

"_You tell me, Cassandra – that's the game my special girl's going to play._"

She concentrated, easily finding Uncle Fausto's mind beyond the glass. "You're behind the mirror," she told him, "with two other people – one's a doctor, like you, the other's got a . . ." She glanced at Barney and, mindful of his admonition, plunged through the slime of the man's mind, past the bright imaginings of the mummy-and-daddy things he wanted to do to the pretty nurse, digging deeper to find some other way to describe him. "The other's a Judge . . . a kind of Judge," she corrected herself. "He . . . judges Judges?"

Soft thunder came over the speakers – a gloved hand cupping the microphone. The voice that followed was muffled, the imperative of communication in the mind she was already inside was not. _She knows what I am, who I am – my presence here is classified! She needs to be . . ._

The thunder rolled again as the hand was pried off the mic. "_Your boss wanted to know what she could do,_" Uncle Fausto drawled. "_I told him I could write a report, but he wanted to see first paw._" Rindón coughed. "_Beg pardon, first _hand_._" Even though the speakers, the spug-slurping smile was clear in his voice. Cassandra didn't get what was so funny, but the slime of the Judge's mind rippled with an embarrassed and annoyed thought; _robohound_.

"He thinks it's a trick," Cassandra realized. "He's upset about something and he thinks it's a trick. It's not a trick!" she exclaimed angrily. "It's just . . . what I do," she finished lamely.

Comfort and compassion enfolded her – perhaps it was the distance, the separation of the mirror and microphone, but there was something cold and clinical about it; very clean and very white but stiff and starched like the sheets she'd slept in the night before. "_I know that, Cassandra,_" Uncle Fausto assured her. His voice dimmed, as if his head was turned away from the microphone. "_Why'd you wanna go upset my special girl?_" he asked.

The judge of Judges' greasy mind spiked with annoyance. "_I think you might be too close to this subject, Rindón,_" he said. "_It is my recommendation it is . . ._"

"My name is Cassandra Anderson and I'm a _girl!_" she yelled. "I'm a she, not an it." She turned to the big orderly. "Tell him, Barney," she begged. "Tell him – I'm a _girl_ and I'm a _she_."

"He knows that, Miss Cassandra," he assured her. "He knows that just fine. He's just . . ."

She whipped her head towards the mirror. "He's a bad man with secrets and a slimy mind!" she snapped. She folded her arms and pouted. "I don't like him," she said decisively.

There was mingled laughter from the speakers. "_Gotta admit,_" drawled Uncle Fausto, "_she's got your number._"

A different voice came from the speakers – it belonged to the other doctor. "_While you hardly have to be psychic to make that determination,_" it chuckled, "_her power is impressive. And this is native, Fausto? You say she is untutored?_"

Uncle Fausto made an affirmative noise in his throat. When he spoke again his voice was louder and softer; he'd leaned into the microphone. Plosives popped and breath crashed like the river's surf on the water-worn plasteen granules of the beach that ran past her window . . . her _old_ window, she realized with a frown. "_What about the man in the room with you, Cassandra? What can you tell me about him?_"

She put her head on one side and studied him carefully. "He's a bad man," she said at length. "He's done . . . very naughty things. He doesn't want you to find out about them – he doesn't want me to tell you what he did."

"_What did he do?_" It wasn't Uncle Fausto who spoke – it was the Judges' judge. She hesitated.

"_It's alright, Cassandra – you can say._"

Even though she had permission from Uncle Fausto, she didn't want to. She squirmed. "He's a tapper – shook down one guy just this week, just before he was pulled in. And he's . . . done _mummy-and-daddy_ things with women like . . ." She returned the nurse's glare as Barney interrupted her.

"Don't you worry about that, Miss Cassandra," he told her. "Med-Judge Rindón," he said to the empty air, "I don't know if this is . . ."

"_I do._" Rindón's voice was the crack of a whip. "_Go on, Cassandra._"

"He likes girls with dark hair," she said, her voice certain and more confident now. She was staring at the perp shackled in front of her, her blue graze sharp as icicles. "Slim. Young. They should be at school. They're not, though. He did a job for his buddy – a load of sugar came in from Colombia through Baltimore. He met it at the docks. Buddy offered him a cut, but the white's hard to move. Too much heat from the black-and-bronze, even in Baltimore. His buddy was smuggling . . . some _real_ sweet stuff. One of them caught his eye. Slim and pretty. No-one had touched her. She didn't want to, but he . . ." Cassandra shuddered, shaking her head. "I don't want to . . ."

"Med-Judge Rindón!" Barney called out. He crouched down. "You don't have to do nothing you don't want to, Miss Cassandra," he promised.

"_He's right, Cassandra._" Uncle Fausto's voice was a long, slow drawl. "_But I'd really like you to. I want to see what my special girl can do. Now, if you don't want to . . ._"

"I do!" she exclaimed. "I do. Really, I do," she assured Barney. She settled back into her chair and stared at the man in front of her once again. He was looking at her with a mixture of fear and revulsion. _Witch!_ his mind screamed. "He doesn't like me," she pouted. She turned to Barney. "Why doesn't he like me? They're _his_ thoughts. He did those things."

"I didn't do nothing!" the man spat. "Alright, I'll cop to the shakedown, but I don't know _nothing_ 'bout no sugar deal in Balti and I ain't _never_ mixed with traffic. That's stuff's _sick_, man," he said with feeling. "Don't care what little-miss-mutie here says. I ain't _never_ . . ."

"Liar." Cassandra cut his feeble protests off. "You're a liar and you're lying. You took her to the Waterfront Motel. It rents rooms by the hour. You bought three, but you didn't use them all. She didn't want to but you did and you held her down and . . . and . . ." She blushed furiously, the alien thoughts she was sifting through shaming her. "And then she screamed so you hit her and she was mean to you. She called you a name." She skewered the squirming perp with a gimlet gaze, piercing through his petty obfuscations and ripping his ashamed secrets from him. She furrowed her brow, puzzled. She glanced up at Barney. "Okay," she admitted, "you're _much _bigger than him, but he's as tall as my daddy. Why would she call him 'little'?"

The nurse laughed, lifting her hand to hide her wide smile and her big, perfect, gleaming white teeth. Barney's dark skin deepened to an even darker blush. "Sir, I must protest . . ." he began.

"Spug you, you mutie bitch!" the perp spat. "That little whore – playing it all coy, like she didn't want it. I gave her it _good_. What kinda life would she have had, anyway? Living in that dump? I'd have given her_ everything_ – food, clothes. She'd'a been _my_ bitch – I'm goin' places." He glared up at the nurse. "And what _you_ laughin' at, sugar-tits?" he yelled. The nurse lifted a fine eyebrow and jammed the sizzly-thing into his ribs again with a twist of her pretty face. He screamed and screamed and Cassandra screamed too, the pain arcing through the psychic link.

"Nurse Courtney!" Barney jumped forward and grabbed her arm, pulling her off the unfortunate man. He sagged, barely conscious, panting shallow, panicked breaths, his face pale and running with sweat.

"_Interesting,_" came Rindón's voice.

"_Hmm,_" murmured the other doctor. "_Sympathetic physical pain – not, I think, purely psychosomatic._"

"_No,_" agreed Rindón. "_That's something else. Absent any other classification, I would be inclined to categorize it as psympathetic. You notice how deep she was in? Her word choices? They were informed by his vocabulary. Now, I think, with time and training . . ._"

"_Can that be cured?_" The Judges' judge abruptly interrupted. "_Or stopped, or whatever?_"

"_Why, hounddog, I didn't think you cared._"

"_I don't. But, if muties are going to be useful, they have to . . ._"

"_The term is _divergence_,_" Uncle Fausto said silverly. "_And, as I was saying, with time and training I believe both issues – the psympathetic pain and the linguistic accommodation – can be remediated. As you say, it would be valuable. Cassandra,_" he leaned toward the microphone again, "_how are you? Is my special girl okay? You're a big strong girl, aren't you?_"

Wearily, her head throbbing, Cassandra nodded. "Yuh . . . yes," she managed, "yes." She turned to the mirror, psynsing through it as if it were clear glass. She could see the three men there; Uncle Fausto seated in front of the microphone, the other doctor standing beside him – dark-hair close-cropped with a neatly-manicured beard – the judge of Judges lurking in the shadows a few steps back – scrawny with a thin neck, eyes like the sheen of spit on asphalt and his lank hair receding from his temples. "He killed that girl," he said softly. "He strangled her and tied her body in the sheets with a cinderblock. Dropped her in the harbor near pier 14. He's a bad man."

"_I think you're right,_" Uncle Fausto agreed. "_Now, what do we do with bad men, Cassandra?_"

"I . . . I don't know," she stammered uncertainly.

"_Oh, come now – I think you do. What did you do to the other bad man? You hit him, right? Why not hit this one, too?_"

She shook her head. "I shouldn't have done that," she whispered, almost as if to convince herself. "I was naughty . . ."

"_But he is _very _naughty, isn't he, Cassandra?_" Rindon's drawl was an insinuating purr. "_Surely it's okay to be naughty to _really_ naughty people?_"

She bit her lip and gathered her courage. "I don't like this game, Uncle Fausto," she said softly, "I don't want to play anymore. Can I go see my daddy? I'll bet he misses me – he must be worried."

"_Well,_" Uncle Fausto said slowly, "_I'm not sure your daddy wants to see you right now – I mean, he'll be tired from the treatment and all. But he's just fine,_" he assured her, "_Nurse Courtney's been taking good care of him now your mummy's not here. She's _real_ good at taking care of daddies when mummies aren't around._"

"I'll bet she is," muttered Barney darkly. The older woman glared at the orderly, snatching her hand free of his grasp and clipping the taser to her belt with savage self-pacifism. Barney had spoken so quietly only Cassandra and the nurse could have heard, but Uncle Fausto's voice still rang over the speakers.

"_You take our . . . _patient_ to examination room five, Barney,_" he ordered. "_Nurse Courtney and I can take care of my special girl._"

"Yessir, Med-Judge Rindón." Barney dipped his head deferentially to the mirror. "But I'd much rather stay with Miss Cassandra; I think she . . ."

"_How about you let me think, Barney?_" There was steel under the drawl now, audible even through the speakers. "_Every time you think it just ends badly for you. Now, I was generous to you and gave you a job after you'd done all that thinking and got yourself into a whole heap of trouble. My understanding was that you were going to work for me, Barney . . . if that's not the case . . ._"

"Nosir, Med-Judge Rindón." The big orderly practically snapped to attention. He stepped smartly past Nurse Courtney, easing the brakes off the wheelchair and spinning the semi-comatose 'patient' around and pushing him quickly out of the room. The nurse crouched down next to Cassandra, her silly tight skirt riding up with a nauseating flare from the greasy mind behind the mirror as the lacy tops of her stockings were revealed, and started to remove the wires from her body.

Cassandra was so intent on what the nurse was doing, biting her lip so she didn't give her the satisfaction of wincing as the sticky pads were pulled off, she didn't notice Uncle Fausto until he was standing right behind her. "C'mon, Cassandra," he said, taking her hand and lifting her out of the chair. "Let's go have a walk in the atrium and talk about what just happened."

"I'm _tired_," she moaned. "I'm tired and my head hurts. I don't know if I _like_ this game – mummy always said I should _hide_ what I could do. She said people wouldn't like it. That man didn't like it. I don't like knowing what's inside people's minds – some of them are _slimy_." Uncle Fausto crouched down before her, taking her tiny hands in his.

"But you're my special girl," he explained. "You're _special_, Cassandra – more special than your mummy and daddy knew, more special than _anyone_ else. So the rules don't apply to you. You don't have to hide – not if you play my game, you don't. C'mon, let's go talk about what you did." She didn't look convinced. "Only way to get better at a game is practice, Cassandra," he reminded her. "We can have ice-kreem afterward."

She narrowed her eyes – her daddy had promised ice-kreem often, but rarely delivered. Truth be told, events had always seemed to conspire against him. Still, she'd learned to be very skeptical about that specific treat. "Promise?" she asked.

Uncle Fausto spread his hands as if offended. "Would _I_ lie to my special girl?"


	9. Disorderly

**Prog 9 : Disorderly**

It was abruptly dark within Mercy, the morning sun lancing a thin line of light through the single open door. The long golden path reaching into the seemingly-endless darkness did nothing to illuminate the dim corners of the foyer, merely revealing the trash and detritus strewn on the floor.

Her crimson hair gleaming in the sun and long shadow flung forward, Quartermain snapped her head back as Cornelius closed the door behind them, the acute wedge of light abruptly narrowing to a flashlight beam, then a single golden thread, and finally vanishing altogether. The noise of the door latching shut echoed grimly through the pitch-darkness. Quartermain's heart leaped to her mouth and, for an instant, despite the fact she knew it made perfect sense – the harsh contrast of bright sunlight and darkened room would ruin their night-vision – flailing terror scrabbled at her heart. _We're trapped in here, the door's closed, we'll never get out . . ._

The crack of breaking plastic. A spark of pus-green illumination. Slowly, a queasy luminescence grew from the snapped chemphail in Cornelius' hand, driving the darkness back with a pathetic circle of ghastly phosphorescence. He clipped the glowstick to his shoulder as Quartermain did the same. The J-Dept chemlight produced frequencies of light the human eye was most sensitive to. But pragmatism was not aesthetics; Quartermain's scarlet hair was featureless black in the green light, her eyes burning like witch-fires. Cornelius' face was gallows-spectral, his broad cheekbones and angular jaw underlit so an algae-slimed skull stared at the Cadet with empty eyes. She shivered and turned away.

Even as the glowsticks brightened with accelerating chemical reactions and their eyes adjusted, the fringes of the room remained in unknown darkness. Quartermain edged gingerly forward, her head on a swivel, her boots shuffling through the discarded litter on the floor. She leaned over the reception desk, tilting her shoulder so the glowstick illuminated behind it. Something – several somethings – scurried in the darkness, tiny claws clattering on the floor. Jittery, she jumped, jerking her gun up and letting off a burst before she could stop herself. Muzzle-flare strobed, capturing Cornelius hastening to her side in a crude monochromatic three-frame animation as bright flashes filled the room. Noise echoed, battering itself to silence against the walls. The acrid stench of ammonia mingled with cordite hit her nostrils. She laughed nervously. "Rats . . ."

"Keep your head, Jackie." Cornelius' voice was calm, but she knew him well-enough to detect the faint edge of disapproval blunted by his own nervousness. He blinked his eyes to clear the bright-fog afterimage from them.

"Sorry, boss," she muttered contritely. "What's the plan?"

Cornelius didn't answer immediately, instead snapping a couple more glowsticks and tossing them out into the darkness. Sonar-green suggestions writhed in the shadows of the foyer as the light sources flipped end-over-end, revealing an empty space strewn with long-dead potted plants, low tables and chairs, and a few inoffensive pieces of abstract art. The puddles of light settled as the sticks spun to stillness, flat green tableaus that seemed to float in black nothingness. For long seconds, he scanned the room, turning his head and lifting his hand to shield his eyes from overspill from the chemphails. "Boss?" began Quartermain. He pressed a finger to his lips for silence.

She shut up. Cornelius gave the room a final sweep and turned to her. He flicked his head, pointing with his chin. "Main stairwell's that way; should give us access to all the levels. Blueprints say there's a skylight."

Quartermain nodded, even though it was difficult for Cornelius to see her – the glowsticks provided poor illumination in the large room and as she moved the shoulder-mounted light moved too, creating confusing shadows and projections. There were no windows in the foyer, but . . . "Shouldn't there be light from the stairwell, boss?" she asked. "Blueprints show it's pretty open, and the foyer connects to the lower levels."

Cornelius slung his blockrocker and reached into a thigh pouch for the building's plans, unfolding the flimsy printout and lifting it so the glowstick illuminated it. The paper rustled and something out in the darkness rustled too. Swiftly, he folded the map closed. It crumpled and he stuffed it back into his fatigues in a scrunched bundle. "_Lotsa_ rats, boss," said Quartermain with a shudder.

"No . . ." said Cornelius softly, his eyes and ears straining. Something else moved – a metallic scraping against rockcrete, a glutinous hissing noise. He snatched something from his belt, popped the cap off the pyrophoric fuse. "Flare!" he yelled, tossing it into the darkness and grabbing for his gun.

Quartermain screwed her eyes shut as the munition went off, flinching to take the glare on her shoulder rather than in the face. Harsh sunfire painted the foyer, edging everything with sharp-edged shadows. The flare fountained white sparks, spitting gobbets of flaming metal over the floor, darkness fleeing to the corners of the room like burning paper.

Cornelius had an instant's warning before they were on him, flinging themselves forward on all-fours with a loping gait, gangly limbs propelling them with surprising speed. He managed to get two shots off, hitting one in the head and chest, the filth-encrusted arthritic claws of its hands inches away. And then another two slammed into him and he staggered backwards, going down and dropping his weapon as another tackled him at the knees. "_Oppa!_" she screamed.

Cornelius was in motion before he hit the floor, twisting to come down with a knee in one's throat, breaking another's hold with a straightened arm and snatching his daystick with his free hand. Bloody mucus sprayed upwards, splattering his uniform as a trachea was crushed. He rolled to his feet, lashing out with baton and boot, sending the other two tumbling away. "_Focus_, Cadet!" he snapped.

There were dozens of the things – filthy, ragged, once-recognizable as human and now barely that. The flare was still roaring, lighting the foyer with pure illumination, revealing the walls and floor smeared with dirt and decay, rotting garbage and half-chewed corpses piled festering in the corners. They crouched in the shadows, some clinging to the walls and even hanging bat-like from the ceiling. "Bright-bright!" they chittered. "No-likee-lightee! No likee! No likee!"

They were men – or had been, perhaps – dressed in tattered-rags that had once been green scrubs. They were scrawny and malnourished, limbs twisted as if they'd been broken and healed poorly. Their hands and feet were gnarled collections of bone and talon wrapped in boil-encrusted parchment skin, gray veins writhing around their knuckles like roots around rocks. Little could be seen of their faces – just a fang-filled maw gaping and chomping and slobbering behind a portcullis-like facemask, bloody-phlegm spitting and boiling. Needle-teeth that cut and ravaged cracked and rotted lips in their hunger. "Munchy-crunchy! Time for lunchy!" they gurgled. "Onesie-twosie, thick and juicy!"

Quartermain's face twisted with revulsion and anger. "It's _puppy fat_, you insensitive spug!" she snapped. "I'm working out!" She snapped the gun to her shoulder, bracing her legs and her sensuous lips in a grim pout of concentration, picking her targets with mechanical precision. The things shrieked and dived clear, blood-black jelly bursting from their wounds, the air thick with the stench of death and decay. She swallowed her disgust, desperately telling her mind this was nothing more than an exercise on the range.

Half a dozen charged Cornelius. They had tried, or _someone_ had tried, to make them look like the building. Featureless black domes were bolted to their skulls, the grilles over their mouths rusted with blood, maggots writing amid the rotting remains of past meals. Putrefying hunks of bone and flesh were nailed to their shoulders – rad-gulls or some other air-vermin to the right, a rack of ribs to the left.

He took in their weird adornments in the splintered second before any analysis vanished in the swirl of motion. He spun to the side, stomping down as one fell past him, cracking bones and smashing it to the ground like an insect. He brought his knee up into the sternum of another, grabbing it by the throat and throwing it away. He sliced the legs out from under a third with a sweep of his daystick.

There was no art or strategy to their assault – they simply flung themselves at him, mouths howling behind the portcullises, the stench of decaying meat bellowed into his face. He whipped his weapon up, catching one in the chin and sending it flailing back with a shattered jaw. He stepped forward, bringing the daystick back down and whacking another on the crown of the head with enough force to crack its helmet.

In her near-panic, Quartermain had miscounted and the bolt fell on an empty chamber. "Drokk." She shucked the magazine, flipped the pair taped jungle-style in her hand. She was too-slow; she managed to slam the mag home but couldn't pull the bolt before one of them grabbed her. Its talons sank into her shoulder. Armorweave foiled its claws but the thing's surprising-strength was near-crippling; she cried out in pain and fell to her knees. That saved her throat as it lunged for her, tilting its neck back to bring its teeth to bear. The portcullis' tips tore ragged lines through her scalp.

Cornelius dropped his shoulder and flipped one of the things over his head as it charged him. It shrieked, flailing wildly as it spun and fell. He kicked out behind him, catching it in the chin and silencing it with a snapped neck. He swung that knee forward, doubling another over with a sickening blow to the solar plexus, driving the tip of his daystick into its spine with fracturing force.

He tossed the paralyzed ruin away, moving to help Quartermain, but slipped as one of the things he'd left mewling and broken on the floor grabbed his foot. Filthy claws tightened around his ankle and fangs gnawed at his calf. Bootleather saved his flesh, but his leg was jerked backwards and he stumbled to one knee. He jerked his elbow backwards, smashing through rusted steel and crushing the thing's nasal cavity deep into its face – its skeleton was fragile, a worm-eaten honeycomb of rotted bone. He struggled to his feet, using his daystick as a cane to push himself upright.

Quartermain was on her back, her forearm jammed desperately into the neck of the monster, straining to push it off her. It howled and gibbered, fangs inches away dripping stagnant blood-flecked spittle into her face. "Didn't . . . your mother . . . ever tell you . . . to _floss_?" she grunted. The thing gurgled as it pushed itself forward, its trachea crumpling. It didn't seem to mind, nor need eyes to find her – its featureless helmet reached below its nose, blindfolding it. Something itched at her psynses, lurking beyond the awareness of her vestigial telepathy – these things were driven by other than mere biology, sustained by some dark power that animated this whole building. She grit her teeth and fumbled for her boot knife.

The things – or the dark intelligence animating them – realized Cornelius was the greater threat and dove for him en masse. They hit him just as he was rising to a crouch, their combined speed and weight knocking him on his back. He vanished beneath a welter of gnarled limbs and stringy flesh, clawing and scrabbling. He kicked out, sending one flying away with a pathetic shriek. It smashed against the wall with a crackle of bone, smearing a trail of slime as it slid down.

The things howled with anger and redoubled their efforts. He ducked his head into his shoulders and crossed his arms to protect his face. They clawed at him, gouging the leather and scoring bright scratches in the armor plates, battering his chest. He cried out in pain as one of them drove its knotted fist into his still-tender ribs. Dim realization flooded through their atrophied minds and they hissed with satisfaction as they concentrated their blows.

Quartermain drew her knife and with a convulsive burst of strength shoved her arm up and away, forcing the thing's head back. She stabbed upwards, driving so deep her hand pressed against its throat, the tip of the blade piercing its brain. There was ear-splitting bang, a blue-green flash of eye-boiling brightness, a shock like grabbing a live-wire in the rain. She yelped and kicked the corpse off her, her right arm hanging buzzing-limp, vision and thoughts clouded with pulsing afterimage. Smoke rose from her glove, the pain of a scorched palm burning the fog from her mind. Her knife was still embedded in the thing's head, spasmodically crackling with chained lightning, an extra layer of burning offal added to the stench of the room.

She managed to get to her knees and then one foot down, her right arm still useless, when another of them leaped for her. She flipped onto her shoulders, grimacing as she grabbed it between her thighs and rolled so she was on top. Jaw-clenched with effort but her face a dispassionate mask, she wrapped her legs around it in a figure-four and pinned its neck to the floor, the full weight of her shoulder pressing her thumb onto its windpipe. She squeezed, the leather of her pants creaking as her broad quads tightened. The thing gurgled and gasped, its ribs groaning.

Cornelius was on his side, curled to protect his ribs and head, looking for an opening. He spun on the floor, getting a knee under him and grabbing one of them around the neck. He rose to his feet, jerking his elbow and snapping its spine like a marrow-bone. He dropped it to the floor, leaping backwards to get some distance, his right arm defensively tight against his chest. He bounced easily on the balls of his feet, his eyes flickering back and forth between them. Half-a-dozen opponents, well-coordinated, fast-and-strong but delicate. "Alright," he murmured, "alright. Who's first?"

They all charged him at once.

He spun away, executing a quick chop to one's neck and sending it tumbling to the ground. Another stepped into an explosive kick, its face imprinted with his boot's eagle-treads. His fist came up, going off like a concussion grenade under one's chin, shattering its jaw and snapping its head back. He swept the legs from under another and stomped down, crushing its chest. He stepped into another's charge, grabbing it and spinning to throw it into its buddy. The two of them tumbled to the ground in a welter of limbs.

Quartermain hadn't been idle – her arm still flopped from her shoulder, but sensation was returning to her fingertips. She pressed down harder, gritting her teeth and snarling with satisfaction as something gave in its throat with a gristly crunch. Arching her back and grunting with effort she clenched her legs until she thought her muscles would pop. She could feel fragile bone crumbling in the thick embrace of her thighs. The thing gave a gasping shriek, breathing its last as ribs snapped one by one, pulping and piercing the offal stuffed higgledy-piggledy inside its chest. Quartermain grinned as her head sagged forward, sweaty hair flopping down. "Thick 'n' juicy, huh?" she panted. She slapped her thigh proudly. "_Damn_ straight."

"Quips later, Cadet." Cornelius was still standing warily, eying their remaining opponents. They were hanging back, hissing angrily, nervously starting forward and then leaping away.

"Nastee-nastee," they gurgled. "They hurts us, kills us." They licked their gnawed and cracked lips, glancing hungrily at their fellows' corpses on the floor. "Yummy-yummy, more for tummy . . ." they murmured.

"Drokking degenerates," spat Quartermain. She unwound herself from around the jellied chest of her victim, hobbling upright like she'd been given leg-presses as PT punishment by Novak. "'Rocker on your five, boss," she said, sweeping her foot so the gun slid along the floor.

It bounced to a stop against Cornelius' boot. Without taking his eyes off the twisted horrors he knelt to retrieve it, pulling back the bolt to chamber a round even as they flung themselves at him. He fired from his crouch, the butt against his shoulder, precise three-round bursts cutting them down.

The final round whipped over the shoulder of the last one as it tumbled, the bullet vanishing into the shadows at the stairwell end of the the foyer. "Fire in . . ." began Quartermain.

_BOOOM!_ The Hi-Ex shell – one of the rounds the precog had loaded to surprise everyone but her – detonated in a smoky-edged fireball against the makeshift barricade separating the foyer from the atrium stairwell. File cabinets and other furniture were flung in the air by the force of the explosion, dust blowing back into the foyer in roiling clouds, motes of shattered gypsum sparkling and whirling in long fingers of dusty sunlight.

" . . . the hole?" she finished in a very small voice. Cornelius chuckled, but winced as his ribs pained him. "You okay, boss?" she asked as he clutched at his side.

"I'm good," he lied. It wasn't the pain, that was manageable – it was the worry the wound might always stay with him, that he was permanently injured, that this was the first step in a long, slow decay of the flesh. The nurse had told him he'd have weakness and tenderness for a while, and the official recommendation had been to take it easy for a week or two. He hadn't been able to – the demands of adjudication had seen to that, of course – so it was to be expected. But, even so, it was disquieting. He shivered himself free of his ruminations and very deliberately took his hand off his side. He spun the blockrocker in his hand and handed it to Quartermain butt first. "I'm throwing your numbers off?" he asked.

She shook her head as she took the gun in her left hand. "Nope."

He grinned. "Didn't think so." He retrieved his daystick, shaking blood and brains off with a practiced flick of the wrist. He didn't collapse or stow it, instead tapping it meditatively against his palm as he stalked towards the broken bodies littering the floor. He glanced at Quartermain's last victim. "You don't skip leg-day," he remarked. She blushed, modestly giving a lopsided shrug. "What's wrong with your arm?"

She slung the gun and massaged her bicep. Feeling was coming back and she wiggled her fingers experimentally, rotating her shoulder. "Dunno," she said shortly. She pointed at the corpse with her boot knife embedded in its skull – the hilt still crackled with unearthly arcs. "Stabbed that one – got a shock."

"Electric?" asked Cornelius. She shook her head.

"Psionic." Gingerly, using the back of her hand, she tapped the knife. Satisfied, she put her foot on its skull and yanked. The blade came free with a particularly disgusting sucking noise, pulling with it glutinous strands of pinkish-gray brain matter. Swallowing her nausea, she held the knife inches from her face and examined it. "Cerebral tissue's inflamed." The stench of rotting, fried fat was awful – somehow, she managed to speak without opening her mouth or nostrils.

"What's that?" Cornelius asked. There was a brain-matted hunk of burned technology fused to the tip of the blade, what looked like a capacitor welded to the chromium-vanadium-molybdenum steel. Quartermain pulled hanks of sizzled cerebellum clear.

"Psi-amp," she said. She grabbed it and wiggled – it was solidly attached. Rather than drop the knife, she tightened her grip and held it by her side. "The helmet's an antenna – a transmitter and receiver, catches psionic waves and focuses them through the amp. I've seen plans in PsiDiv's files. They boost psychic power, make you more receptive, more open to suggestion. But the neurological trauma's severe, never mind the risk of infection or brain damage from the surgery to install them." She looked at her glove with distaste, wiping it on her uniform.

Cornelius nodded and studied the corpses on the floor. The flare was spluttering out, but there was enough light from the stairwell to see by. The things were obviously the remains of hospital orderlies, driven to madness and cannibalism by isolation and malnutrition when Mercy had closed. He'd seen horrors like them before – in the Undercity, in the depths of slum hab-blocks, out in the Cursed Earth. Degenerate cults of sub-human monstrosities desperately supplicating a powerful figure – a warlord, mutant leader, gang boss – with a grotesque, almost-religious fervor. How much easier must it have been to turn them into loyal minions with a brutal psychic imperative burning through their butchered brains? "So you think our perp found a stash?" Cornelius asked. "Stuffed 'em in these poor sap's heads, set them to guard his door?"

"Yes, but more than that. They're like watch-'bots – he can control them, see through their eyes. I couldn't psynse it before, outside, but . . ." She shivered and ran a trembling hand through her hair, clawing at her scalp and wincing as her wounds were tugged open. "They're tied to this place, tied to him – they, _it_, are extensions of his will, of his . . ." Her voice trailed off.

"Hatred?" asked Cornelius. "Malice?"

"No," realized Quartermain. "It's not . . . he doesn't . . ." She turned to him. "It's _justice_, boss," she explained. "It's justice – a twisted sense of it, sure, but you can see it, sort of understand it, you know? He wants . . . justice. He wants to see the guilty punished, criminals stopped, a purer world without crime and sin and weakness."

Cornelius snorted. "Who doesn't?" he asked flippantly.

"Who _does_?" she countered. He turned to her. "Who _really_ wants justice, boss?" she asked. "Really? Who hungers for it, obsesses over it, will do anything to get it? The one thing they won't give up even if they sacrifice everything else, the thing they would do anything to achieve? Who's _really_ like that? Not perps. Not citizens."

"Judges." The word dropped into Quartermain's questioning pause like a pebble into a still pool. "You think . . . ?"

"And he wants psis." Quartermain continued as if she hadn't heard him, her eyes glazed and distant, her voice singsong and faraway. "I can taste his hunger for us – he always wanted us; to be his angels of mercy and justice throughout the city. Beyond the city, perhaps. I can hear his promises – he will make me strong, lay his hand on me, smelt the dross from my bronze . . . I will be his instrument of justice, of vengeance, of retribution." There was a blue-green gleam in her eyes that hadn't been there before, a certainty more than precognition or intelligence in her voice. "He wants us all – but he wanted Cassandra the most. She was his project, his special girl – and she was taken from him. And he's angry about what's been done to her, her weakness, her secrets, her idols. He will break her – he'll take her and break her and make her his and . . ."

Cornelius' hand tightened painfully on her shoulder. "No," he promised, "he's _not_. Because we're gonna find her and we're gonna bring her home. Right?" he asked. "You _get_ me, Cadet?"

Her eyes were wide and wild, staring at nothing, her face slack and underlit by the faint glow from the psi-amp welded to the blade in her hand. Cornelius fancied he could feel something with senses he didn't know he had, running through the nerves of her shoulder, buzzing under his fingers. "He is the eagle and we will be his claws . . ."

Cornelius tapped her wrist with his daystick – a precise, surgical blow. Her hand sprang open of its own accord and the knife clattered to the floor. Quartermain gasped and started, coming back to herself. "Woah . . ." she breathed, massaging her wrist. The reversed-eagle electro-branded through the leather by the pommel stared back at her. Very deliberately, she stripped her hand and tossed the glove to the ground, sharply kicking the knife away. Her naked palm was a flushed, angry red, throbbing with heat. Gingerly, she licked and blew to cool it, very deliberately closing her fingers and pressing her bare hand quiescent to her side. She nodded firmly. "We're going to find her, and bring her home," she agreed.

There was a glutinous, chuckling laugh. Cornelius moved swiftly, putting himself between her and the orderly struggling to sit up. Its spine was snapped, its legs trailing uselessly, but it pulled itself forward on its arms and drew itself upright. Maybe it was the only one left alive, maybe the others were too weak to move, maybe a living vessel wasn't even needed for the malignant intelligence that spoke through it – who knew? "Lissten to the girl sscout," it hissed. Its voice was deeper than before – a slow, sibilant drawl rather than a peeping, chittering trill. "Turn around. Leave. Sslink off back to ssafety and home. Leave Cassssandra to me."

Quartermain stepped out from behind Cornelius. She came forward, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. "Rindón," she said flatly – it wasn't a question.

The thing laughed again, thin lips drawing back from finger-length fangs and flapped its claws together in a ghastly semblance of applause. "Clever, clever, Little-Missss Thunder-Thighss!"

Cornelius' hand clenched and unclenched on the hilt of his daystick. It took all his willpower not to smash the thing into a red smear with a few judicious blows. Only the fact he knew this was nothing more than a mouthpiece stayed his hand – destroying it was fruitless as smashing a radio. "I guess SJS lied," was all he said.

The gnarled flesh-puppet laughed. "Sso bitter, Corneliuss?" it taunted. "Don't be; Judgess are sso eassily perssuaded, made to ssee what you want them to ssee. A little pussh, a little sshove . . . ssteer their minds like hand in glove." Once more, it laughed and, once again, Cornelius didn't. "No ssensse of humor, though," it complained.

Now it made sense. Cornelius could see the scenario – Slocum (never what he would have called strong-minded, a weak-willed yes-man, a toady easily persuaded by a slick tongue or pretty face) coming to arrest Rindón. The Med-Judge an undiscovered-psi – Cornelius knew they were more common than the Department had originally suspected, even in populations born before the war, many of them hiding their powers. Psionic screening had been in its infancy when Rindón was inducted – it was _his_ research that had made it possible, for Grud's sake! He could easily have slipped through what net there was. A shootout, the doctor wounded but not dead, Slocum 'persuaded' the job was done. Sector nine and the SJS wanting to close the case and put a lid on it – the notion of simply boarding-up Mercy and letting it rot out-of-sight and out-of-mind would have been appealing even _without_ any kind of psychic suggestion.

Yes, Cornelius could see it – and didn't want to dwell on it. "These the best you've got?" he asked, gesturing at the bodies on the floor. "Gotta say – I'm not impressed. You don't make a good case for retreat if these . . ." He cocked his head as if trying to think of a word, a calculated act of bravado designed to throw the perp off. "You got a name for 'em, Cadet?"

"Zomborderlies," she said succinctly. Cornelius chuckled.

"Cute," he said.

"Oh, yess, sshee iss!" the thing hissed. It turned to her – she wondered just _why_ the things lurked in darkness, why bright light pained them so much. Its eyes were invisible, hidden behind the featureless dome of the psi-amp's antenna. Disquietingly, it nevertheless somehow managed to face her. She could feel the weight of its – _his_ – attention, an awareness deeper than sight sliding over her. "But not for the reassonss you think – a ssmart mouth and a pretty fasce and good, meaty quadss and glutess. Sshe iss sso much more than that . . ."

Cornelius stood in front of Quartermain once again, leveling his daystick meaningfully at its empty face. "You deal with me, creep," he said decisively.

"Why?" it asked reasonably. "You don't _interesst_ me, Corneliuss. What are you, a blunt? Dumb musscle? I have enough of that. I will admit," it allowed, "thesse . . ." It leaned over, turning its head to peer around Cornelius' bulk, leering at Quartermain, "_zomborderliess_ are lessss than ideal. Thiss crude ssurgery was nescessssary to make them ssuitable for my needss – they were my firsst attemptss. And they were alwayss only in it for the money – it was jusst a job to them, they never believed in the missssion. No passssion for mediscine, but the nurssess . . . " Its words trailed off into a hissing laugh. "You might interesst _them_ . . . Rest assssured," it promised, "I have many more delightss for you to experiensce if you don't turn back."

"Looking forward to it," said Cornelius shortly.

"I doubt that," it grinned. "But, like I ssaid, you don't interesst me – sshe doess. Sshe'ss a _pssi_."

Almost-angrily, Quartermain came out from behind Cornelius once more, actually shoving against him to get him to step to the side. "I'm _fine_," she told him. "This creep doesn't scare me. I just wanna know why; you're a psi . . . like me, like those you experimented on. You're a doctor and a psi and a _Judge_ – and you _tortured_ people like us. Why?" she asked, her voice flat with uncomprehending revulsion. "How?"

"With a ssong in my heart," the thing said. Its smile was grotesquely broad, its improbably-wide mouth stretching impossibly further. "I sseek jusstisce, little one – but I have sseen the darknessss of this scity and I know there iss no jusstisce but merscy, no merscy but death. I do not exspect you to undersstand."

"Oh, I understand." Quartermain's jaw was clenched, her balled fists on her hips. "I'm a Judicial-Cadet, _of course_ I understand. I've seen it, I know the evil that lurks in men's hearts, I've heard the arguments. I just don't _agree_."

It hissed with eager joy. "Oh, you don't undersstand – not _yet_;if you undersstood you _would_ agree. But you could come to – I can _tasste_ your eagerness, your hunger for jusstice. Yess, yess, little one – come to me and be whole, come to me and be my lively little firebrand. You _know_ what you could be, you can ssee it – every dark corner of thiss scity burning with the flame of my jusstisce, a thoussand firess in the scity and a million more beyond . . ."

With every word, Quartermain quailed. Rindón had got to her. She was no longer standing proudly, no longer defiant; she was shaking, her face ashen and lips trembling, actually cowering back behind Cornelius. He'd heard enough. He stepped forward, swinging his daystick. The whole weight and strength of his shoulder was behind the blow and his balance and timing were perfect. The thing lifted off the ground, spinning in the air with the force of the impact, its humerus snapping with a wet _krack!_ Before it landed, Cornelius caught it around the throat with his free hand, slamming it against the wall. Bones crunched in his fist and blood and bile splattered his uniform. "You leave her alone!" he yelled. It laughed again.

"You can't protect her forever," it warned him – somehow, the voice came perfectly from its ruined throat, "and you can't protect her _at all_ from me. And who iss going to protect you from yoursself, from the dark ssecretss you hide in your heart? Your weaknessssess, your obssessssions, the thingss that torment you in the ssecret watchess of the night? Leave," it told him again. "Leave and you need not fasce them. Go back to your flawed jusstisce, your tarnisshed bronsze."

"I'm not leaving without Cassie – where is she?"

Another hissing laugh. "It iss not where sshe _iss_, it iss where sshe iss _going_. And sshe iss coming to me. Cassssandra will be mine, when I have purged her of her weaknessssess and ssmelted the drossss from her bronsze. But don't worry," it assured him, "you will ssee her again, when sshe is perfected. And you will love her for her dark jusstisce even asz sshe tearss out your heart."

"You ain't nothing but a bat-spug-loco punk," Cornelius said decisively, "and I'm done listening." He lifted the ruin above his head and slammed it to the ground. A single blow to crushed its helmet, shattering its skull, but the echoes of its laughter took a long time to fade. He collapsed his daystick, jabbing the tip against the wall so it telescoped back on itself. "Come on," he said, stowing the baton on his belt, "let's get moving – we've wasted enough time." He walked toward the light coming from the stairwell.

Quartermain didn't move. "I shouldn't have come," she said bleakly. She looked up as Cornelius turned to face her. "I'm a liability, boss – I'm a psi, he can get inside my head. That's how he gimmicked Cassandra in here – it's what he does. And he's too powerful – I was a fool to come. Cassandra's _much_ stronger than me, and he got to her. I can't . . ."

Cornelius stalked towards her; Rindón's taunts had been aimed at unnerving her, undermining her self-belief, trying to turn her to the way he saw the world. As a psi, she was vulnerable to his influence. While there was nothing he could do about that, it was the crack in her confidence that truly worried him. "You getting cold feet, Cadet?" he asked.

She blanched, flinching away from something only she was aware of but nevertheless couldn't see. "Don't . . . don't say that, Sir," she begged.

"Because you were all on fire for rescuing Cassie."

"Don't say that!" she shouted, her vehemence surprising them both. "Please! Not . . . not cold. Not _fire._ Just . . . I don't know why," she said lamely. She looked at him imploringly. "Just . . . please?"

Embarrassed and frightened he'd peeled her open to reveal weakness, he nodded apologetically, a comforting hand on her shoulder. "I need you, Jackie," he said without irony. "You know that, right? Out of all the Judges in the city . . ."

"I wouldn't even be in the top ten," she said shortly. "I'm not _quite_ as green as my eyes, Sir."

He considered, realized honesty was the only policy here – regardless of where it led. He was privately interested in the answer himself. He popped out the thumb on his right hand, "Dredd," and started to count on his fingers. "Giant, Hershey, Chris Taylor – no." He folded his middle finger back into his fist, pinned it in place with his thumb and crossed himself. "Grud rest his soul. Daz." He looked at her, almost surprised. "You'd be in the top five."

She narrowed her eyes – she suspected he'd deliberately left names out. "Novak."

He shrugged. "In the classroom or the octagon, every day and twice on Sundays. On the streets?" He shook his head, pointed at her. "_You._ I want the girl with the dream, hungry for the black-and-bronze."

She looked at him carefully, trying to read him, to tell if he was blowing smoke. "Really?" she asked. He shrugged.

"I only lie to Cassie."

Satisfied, she smiled. "You two should quit that," she advised, and silently took point, leading the two of them towards the demolished barrier and the central stairwell.


	10. Ascent

**Prog 10 : Ascent**

Anderson padded obediently in the Angel's wake as he led her into Mercy, the path illuminated by her incandescent guide. The foyer was as she had remembered it – long, low, bright and clear with carpeting and furniture in pale neutral colors. There was a preternatual order to it, a clinical cleanliness artificial and fragile as a vat-grown bell-orchid. Something about its regularity itched at her mind; not an unexpected presence, but rather an absence. It felt like a movie set, a training simulation at the Academy. She pushed outwards with her mind, trying to psynse beyond sight.

Discomfort enfolded her head – not pain, exactly, but rather the certain promise of pain. Hidden behind obedience, the doors of comfort locked with her own guilt over the avoidance of suffering, her will railed against the bars of its cage; _push through it, accept the pain, clear your mind_. Without turning, the Angel tightened its grip and she followed after him with scarcely a hitch in her step.

Her attention was focused, her consciousness narrowed to the things the Angel wanted her to see. But in the periphery of her vision, out of the corner of her mind, things caught her attention. Scurrying things that were once human, dank shadows and dark squalor, the creeping horror of decay. Try as she might – and she did not, truly, _wish_ to try, it was easier not to – she could not turn her head or psynses towards them and so any revelation of what might have lurked beyond the Angel's plans was left in quiet darkness; uninspected but operative.

Her naked feet warm on the soft carpet, the Angel led her through the foyer, past the reception desk she'd once had to stand on tip-toes to peer over and now could have comfortably manned herself, to the open archway leading to the central stairwell. Again, her mind itched as the Angel carefully led her not straight forward but in a back-and-forth dogleg pattern, as if there were invisible lines on the floor. It reminded her of a game she'd played as a child in the corridors of Union City; striding and hopscotching over the big square tiles, jumping with your ankles clamped together, hoping on one foot, following an ever-changing and complex set of rules that were the price of admission to a clique as insular as any color-cut gang. _Step on a crack, break your mother's back._

Something crunched under her foot and pain stabbed through her sole. She yelped in pain, lifting her foot off the floor and hopping forward so she could lean against the railings to examine it. Around her, the fresh-smelling green of the bright garden atrium faded, the whispering leaves above and colorful shrubs and flowers below withering to brown with a desiccating rustle. Decay mingled with the copper scent of her blood, broken glass sticking to her fingers as she cradled her wounded foot. "_Owww . . ._" she exclaimed. She lifted her head, looking around the ruin of the once-beautiful stairwell atrium. "What the drokk? Where am I?"

She was alone, surrounded by overgrown ruins, twenty stories of stairs rising above her. Something pushed against her mind, and she found herself letting it in before she got a hold of herself.

_You are with me, Cassandra. You are never alone, for I am with you._

Instinctively, her hand dropped to her thigh. Unexpected, confusing, conflicting sensations overwhelmed her – her bare flesh goosebumping with cold and fear, fingers sticky with her own blood, hand filled with a pill bottle. But it was the lack of lawgiver that made her feel truly naked. She clutched at her chest, her unbadged breast filling her hand, the hard block of a prescription pad pressing into her chill-peaked flesh. Idiotically, knowing it was foolish, she cast her head about like a blunt, searching for the source of the words. "That's not the question I asked," she said, with as much bronze as she could muster. Her voice echoed tinnily off the walls, muffled and lost amid the rotting boles and limbs of the trees.

_You are concerned with many things, Cassandra. Only one thing is needful. Choose the better part. Come; I will smelt the dross from your . . ._

She grit her teeth and put her foot down, leaning most of her weight on it. She heard glass grind against the dirty tile, a savage spike of pain transfixing her foot and stabbing through her ankle, knee and hip. Blood squished between her clenching toes. "Pain sharpens the mind," she whispered frantically, "pain is the whetstone and I am the blade. Pain is the . . ."

_If pain was so important_ – the voice seemed calm, but there was air of desperation to its sudden focus and effort – _so useful, if you wish to be the sharpened blade . . . why do you avoid it?_

She shifted her shoulders, actually lifting her right heel off the floor so only her toes touched and all of her weight was on her wounded foot. "I don't . . ." she growled through gritted teeth.

_You say such things with your lips, but your heart is far from it. Look at your hands, at the shame you carry_.

Anderson hung her head, lifting trembling hands and gazing at them through a mist of tears. Just who was she trying to fool? She leaned back, shifting her weight. She shook her head. "It _hurts_," she sobbed in pathetic justification. It was obvious she wasn't just talking about her foot. "It hurts _so much_. I can't . . ."

_ Then surrender. Give in. I understand. We all understand._

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Anderson nodded gratefully, fumbling the cap off and tipping three pills into her shaking hand. She threw them into her mouth, imprinting a palmprint like a bloody gag over her face. Grateful, she swallowed, shoulders heaving with shame, chest and back beaded with sweat.

All her pains faded. There was no way the analgesics could have hit that quickly, unlikely there were sufficient active ingredients in the dose-and-a-half she'd taken even if they'd had chance to work. It was something else, an acceptance, a surrender to the vision the Angel had for her. She lifted her head and looked up at him, the smokeless-flame brilliance of his massive muscles a burning-coal, glorious against the verdant luxury of the stairwell atrium.

"_Yes, we understand your flaws, your tarnished bronze. We understand how pathetic, how weak you are. It hurt once, but does it hurt now?_"

She hung her head, biting her lip. "Yes," she whispered. His burning grip closed on her chin, pinching her cheeks, pouting her lying lips. She screwed her eyes shut, but light shone through her cheekbones, red-filtered through blood and marrow, illuminating her retina crimson-black.

"_You shalt not bear false witness, not even against yourself. Only if you are true as I am true will you inherit the scepter and the mace. Only then can you be my claws._"

She clenched her hands around the shameful icons in her hands, unable to find the strength to let them go. "It _did_ hurt," she sobbed, trying to make her memories confirm to her narrative. They were fuzzy, unreliable – it had been a _head wound_, for Grud's sake! - but, even so, she knew they didn't. Relentlessly, she plowed on. "It hurt so much, but I had to work through it – we had a _week_ for the operation, everything was ready to go in one-nineteen. It was all so hard. And they were prescribed!" she insisted. "They were! So, it's really not . . ."

"_Tell the truth, Cassandra. To yourself, for perhaps the first time. How did you come by that scar?_"

She turned a trembling hand over. There was a faint white line curving alongside the knuckle on the outer edge of her index finger. "I . . . I slipped with my knife," she whispered lamely.

The Angel didn't speak. He didn't need to.

"I cut the dispenser open," she admitted. "To get past the metering restriction. But they were prescribed to me! It wasn't as if . . ."

"_Yes, it was._"

She sobbed anew, shaking her head. "I lost the bottle," she argued fiercely, trying to convince herself. "I did, I really did. You have to sign an affidavit saying you did, and . . . and . . . They should have asked how many I had left." She nodded decisively. "They really should."

"_You withheld the truth from them, as if the truth was something they did not have a right too. What are you, Cassandra? Your bronze is not merely tarnished, it is corroded to the core._"

"It hurts!" she screamed. "Don't you understand? They're painkillers and . . ."

"_You do not seek respite from pain, Cassandra – the wound is long-healed. You debase yourself merely for comfort, a comfort you have grown used to. But you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness._"

Anderson pressed her fists against her temples and clenched her teeth, shaking her head in futile denial. "Then _help_ me," she begged. "You said you'd help me!"

"_I desire nothing more than to help you – I long to gather you under my wings, but you reject my love with your weakness and impurity. I will refine you as bronze in a furnace, make of you a glorious weapon to carry my justice and mercy to the ends of earth. But be honest. Admit your weakness and I can draw it from you like poison from a wound. Ask for my mercy and you shall receive it._"

She held her hands in front of her, fingers twitching. She just had to open them, turn her hands, let the book and bottle fall to the ground. She could see it in her mind's eye . . . but could not bring herself to do it. "I . . . I can't," she admitted. "I can't. I'm not . . . I'm not strong enough."

"_No, you are not. I am the eagle, you are my claws. Without me, you can do nothing._" Hands tightening into covetous fists, she nodded and wiped fresh tears of shame from her eyes. "_Come. Ascend with me. Climb to the heights where you may dwell far from your weakness, your food and drink in steady supply._"

Anderson looked up the dizzying height of the atrium, at the stairways and landings zigzagging back and forth, and was overcome with memories and aspirations – not all of them her own. In Mega City One, the vast hab-blocks were cities almost unto themselves – massive arcologies reaching into the sky, level upon densely-packed level, self-contained termite mounds housing tens-of-thousands of forgotten humans out of sight and out of mind of the luckier citizens. Slums for welfare-ticks, that is what people outside of them thought, and – to be honest – they were not wrong. A hundred, two-hundred, maybe three-hundred levels of cramped corridors and cookie-cutter apartments. Schools, shops, restaurants – if you were lucky. A variety of automats if you were not. Poured rockcrete and plasteen, rusting rebar reaching out to snare the unwary. Walls and floor efficient-gray, leavened only by the weathering from pipes leaking chemical spills and bright gang graffiti – tagged and retagged, scrubbed and faded, painted over and defaced, retagged again.

That was where Anderson had grown up, in the mid eight-tenths of Union City in sector 20. 'Mid eight-tenths' wasn't a hard-and-fast rule, but it was a decent guideline. The lower ten-percent of a 'block was eateries, business, public spaces, perhaps a justice-blue Judge-box if you were lucky – apartments there were nicer; not fancy, but comfortable, rented by the employed. If there was 'block security, it would patrol there. A gang controlling those levels would be respectable, hiding the worst excesses of its criminal enterprises, its foot soldiers disciplined, color-cut made-men sophisticated, involved in legitimate business.

The next eight-tenths were a different matter. Above the public face of the 'block, out of the reach of the wealth to be made from commerce and protection, barter and drug dealing were the main industries. Here were the narcofabs, the hit-houses, the brothels, the apartments of the perpetually-unemployed. This was the grinder of Mega City One – citizens went in, and meat came out. The Judges rarely responded – Anderson remembered Peach Trees; she and Dredd had been the first Judges there in years. The gangs ran these levels, and the corridors ran red with blood.

Decent people, good people, like her mummy and daddy . . . and her . . . kept their heads down, just trying to get by. Cashing the welfare checks, hustling a little, maybe selling some plasma or perhaps even selling out to the gangs. Just a little, just this once, just keep telling yourself that as you whored yourself piece by piece just to survive one more day.

She considered; had her mother done that, before the cancer took her? Had her father, before she had brought him here for treatment? What dreams had they had for their daughter? Had they dared have any? Perhaps they idly imagined her as a top-tenther – not thinking how she might have made it in case the impossibility shattered the illusion, merely enjoying the fantasy as a salve against the searing horror of 'block life.

The top levels were the penthouses, the playgrounds of the rich and powerful – the owners of the 'block, celebrities, successful businessmen, politicians, leaders of the most feared and well-respected gangs. The Judges never went there, but the corridors were safe – patrolled by elite private security that was, as often as not, the hardened foot soldiery of the dons and godfathers they were guarding.

Now a Judge, Anderson had risen higher than her parents could ever have imagined – more powerful, more well-connected than any resident of a 'block. She lived, rose and slept above them all – on a floating fortress above the clouds, looking down on the city from her olympian throne, the goddess with the shield.

Is that what he parents would have wanted? Would they be proud of her, of her climb not merely step-by-step, but by leaps and bounds? Her father's interminable failure despite his constant effort had embittered him – what would he have thought of his daughter's rise, elevated by the caprice of fate more than her own effort? Rindón's special girl, Pepper's special girl, the Department's special girl, special selection, special instruction, special assessment, special circumstances . . .

_ Special, special, special, Cassandra._

All of this went through her mind as she looked upwards. Twenty stories were nothing – Novak would give running up and down that many flights or more as casual punishment, and in Mega City One a building that tall was practically a bungalow. But standing at the bottom of it gave her a sickening feeling – not of vertigo, but the opposite. Of having fallen and failed, a goddess cast down but not yet on her knees, humbled but not humble.

She grasped at herself again with shame-filled hands, at her bare breast and naked thigh. A journey of a thousand miles began with a single step, and an ascent to her throne began with these twenty flights of stairs. If she were ever to be worthy of the black-and-bronze again, of _Aegis_, of being the instrument of _his_ justice in this benighted city and beyond, she must start over from the bottom. She hung her head and nodded. "Yes," she whispered, and dutifully followed the Angel as he led her up the stairs.

oOo

It was oppressive, but muffled – like the too-loud music coming from a late-night party in the apartment next door. Anderson couldn't stand it – she banged her mind's fists against the walls of her pysche; _Keep it down! Some of us are trying to sleep!_

She gasped with shock and surprise as her blows hammered the walls flat, blowing them open so she stood in a pitch darkness. No, not quite – from the echoing sound of her own panicked breathing, she was in a long corridor and needle-thin lines of light lanced from either end. The pain had returned, a dull throb underlain with sharp spikes. She winced and limped, her steps uneven as she tried to keep weight off her injured foot. Something had woken her from the path the Angel wanted her on – she was alone in the darkness.

Her eyes, now her consciousness was using them, were adjusting to the dim light. There was the suggestion of a cross-hatch of bars in the wall of the corridor. She stumbled towards it, reaching out to lean against it while she plucked the slivers of glass from her foot.

_He is not for you._

She started back, her hand inches from the grate. Despite herself, knowing it would only push her deeper into the illusion, she answered the voice. "Not for me? What?" She reached out with her mind, pushing her psynes past the portal. There was resistance there, the barrier more than merely physical, designed to keep something in rather than her out.

Raw terror assaulted her mind and she yelped and staggered backwards, her foot torn anew. There was a presence beyond the gate, the shattered remnants of a psyche long-broken and reformed by desperation and cruelty. It was that which had woken her. "Who . . . who is he?" she asked. "What _happened_ to him?"

_I helped him._

"Helped him?" Anderson's voice was a shriek, echoing off the walls and floor and bouncing down the corridor like an errant rubber ball. "_Helped _him? He's shattered, he's ruined! You . . . you . . . there's nothing left there! Nothing but fear! What did you _do_?"

_He always wanted to know secrets, things that were hidden, things people did not wish to reveal. He dug for them, sought them out. He always wanted to help the city, help the Department, help justice itself. It only seemed fair to hold that mirror up to him. Before he sought out the mote in others' eyes, he should have removed the beam from his own._

Anderson could feel sticky psychic fingers raking against the gate. It shielded her from contact, else they would have scrabbled greedily through the dirty corners of her mind, searching for her fears and neuroses, plucking them out, holding them up and forcing her to face them. A name floated up from the files she'd read the night before. "Timor," she stammered. "Judge Timor. He was injured, committed for psychosis . . . you . . . you . . ."

_Now he sees clearly._

"You drove him mad," she whispered. "You didn't _help_ him. You never helped _anyone!_ You tortured and murdered and mutilated!" Memories were flowing back to her, hazy and incomplete, building on the ones that had already returned. Snatches of things best-not-remembered – a woman with haunted green eyes, red-hair partially-shaven from a head pierced by wires and probes; the taste of torment thick in the air of Mercy. "You're a _monster!_" she sobbed.

_I did it all for you, Cassandra!_ The voice was a begging hiss. _All for you! You were the one I love, you were my special girl! Timor was not strong enough, none of them were! But you are! You will be my claws, you will carry the torch of my justice! Do you think it was easy to do this? The cutting and the breaking and the reforming? But I did it, I plowed on through the pain and the blood, through everything I suffered. Don't you understand? I did it all for you!_

Desperately, Anderson tried to recall the horror in Rhine's files – the disgusting details of Mercy. Somehow, she couldn't. It remained just beyond her reach, clinical and detached, a mere statistic always recorded with an asterisk. It made sense, she could understand it, appreciate its necessity. Weakly, she nodded. Thankful for his presence, she leaned against the Angel in the bright corridor and pulled a splinter of glass from her foot, dropping it to the floor. "I know," she assured him, "and I'm so grateful. You have done so much for me."

"_And I will do still more._" There was a grim certainty to the Angel's promise. "_Soon, you will be ready to bring mercy in my name. I will reveal you to this city and the world beyond, and your heart will sing and your soul will burn with the flame of our justice._"

"I am ready! I am! Let me . . ."

"_Not yet. You are still weak, still flawed. Your bronze is tarnished and you are not yet strong enough. But I will purify you, from all your idols I will cleanse you. Then you will be ready to face the crucible of the truth. Then you will truly be my special girl. Come, climb higher and leave the broken behind._"

**A/n :** Not a lot to say here – this chapter delves shallowly into some deep subjects (addiction and even abusive relationships) and I don't want to fill an author's note with some huge essay about things I (and, perhaps no-one) is completely qualified to discuss. But I do want to highlight the _weakness_ of Anderson here. She _is_ weak when faced with her addiction, and when trying to resist the seductive lies tailor-made to convince her. But that doesn't mean she is, per se, a weak person – clearly, she isn't; she's very strong. We all have specific things which we are susceptible to, particular temptations it is very difficult to resist.

Anyway, that is that! Please – if you have any comments, please leave a review! Even if you don't have any comments beyond "liked it / didn't like it" please leave a review!


	11. Following

**Prog 11 : Following**

Silently and with her tongue protruding as she fumbled the delicate operation with a burned hand, Quartermain dripped distilled water on the footprint on the floor. The blood was dry, but the print was about the right size to be Anderson's. If it were not for the deadzone, visorcams and helmetcomps' DB uplinks would have confirmed the toeprints in seconds. As it was, they had to go old-school.

Despite the fact he'd probably never done it outside of the classroom himself, Cornelius had ordered Quartermain to play CSI tech. He was standing guard, blockrocker high and tight against his chest, head on a swivel and gaze reaching up the stairwell. But Quartermain knew his attention was at least a third on her performance, and that was more than enough to spot any errors or missteps. Forcing her hands to not shake despite her nerves she swabbed bloodstains up with a Q-tip, rubbing them on the test card. She stood and pointedly didn't stare at it as she whispered under her breath; "One radopotamus, two radopotamus, three radopotamus . . ."

The atrium of Mercy's central tower was chimney-like – tall and narrow it rose from what had once been a garden of reclaimed trees growing in synthetic soil to the clouded skylight above, flights of stairs on the north and south sides joining twenty landings stacked atop each other, lacing them together like a Sino-Cit finger-puzzle. Even when the skylight hadn't been choked with parasitic vegetation and clogged with filth, there wouldn't have been enough natural light for the trees to flourish – empty sockets, scorched and ringed with shards of broken glass like crystallized tears, showed where glowglobes with daylight filters had been mounted on the lower levels, pointing towards the futile former-extravagance of the garden. Now, it wasn't even a weed-choked ruin – it had passed that years before. The pre-war vegetation couldn't survive in Mega City One's post-war ecology – the skylight had shattered and never been repaired, letting in not only polluted air, but also wind-blown seeds. Rad-vines had strangled the garden, roots worming into the soil, tendrils piercing the bark, vines throttling limbs and sucking nutrients from trees gasping for life. Ornamental plants stood no chance against the mutant vegetation; hardy enough to survive in the Cursed Earth and capable of driving seeming-tender shoots through six inches of blacktop, they would have destroyed the garden mere weeks after Mercy closed its doors.

Now the trees were long-dead, the wood desiccated and rotten, a hollow framework of gnarled vines reaching upwards. Fibrous limbs stretched long and thin, weaving back and forth into an insane tangle as they desperately sought to climb higher than their fellows, an arms-race to claim the light. The only leaves on the rad-vines were at the very top, a dense canopy supported on denuded trunks. Here and there branches thrust out, grasping the railings of the landings and stairs like the arthritic hands of crocks clutching canes.

Little light filtered through the thick canopy above, but after the pitch-darkness of the foyer it seemed unnaturally bright to Cornelius and Quartermain. The floor was thick was rotted mulch, the composted remains of discarded leaves. The vines' ecology was trembling on the verge of collapse; parasitic, they had sustained themselves on the garden but now that was gone and they had grown almost to the point where the weak sunlight could no longer support them. They were choking themselves off, the canopy blocking the light from reaching below. Would this new garden reach equilibrium, Cornelius wondered, or was this life, too, doomed to fail? Here and there, in the darkest and dampest spots in the corners and around the rotted boles of the long-dead trees, some kind of life stirred – stalks and caps and shelves of fungus, spores budding and breeding and decaying. A horrible kind of life-in-death, disconnected from warmth and sunlight, feasting on the ruins of joy. He shivered and focused his attention more closely on the levels above him, telling himself it was because he was wary of what might descend with murder on their master's mind.

When Quartermain had eaten her tenth radopotamus, she examined the card. "Matches Cassandra's major antigen, Sir," she told him – Anderson was AB, because _of course she was_. She didn't need to be psychic to realize he knew she was thinking that, nor to know what his next thought would be; _along with how many other people_?

She also knew _Around 5%_ wasn't going to be a satisfactory answer.

"I don't know her minor antigen profile, Sir," she said apologetically. "If we had a DB uplink . . ." _Right, yeah, this is where we came in and why you were scrubbing the floor with a Q-tip, Jackie,_ she chided herself.

Cornelius snapped Anderson's badge off his belt, flipped it in his hand and offered it to Quartermain. _Bio data on the back, of course. Smooth move, Jackie, _real_ smooth. Look like a dumb Cadet in front of your partner._ Abashed, she took it and compared the two. "All points match, Sir," she said, "it could be her."

Cornelius looked down at her, one eyebrow raised. "'Could', Jackie?" he asked.

She scratched her neck with the corner of the card, resisting the temptation to lift her foot and nervously stand on one leg, but still raising her heel and twisting her boot en pointe. "Well, Sir," she began, her mind churning with numbers, "out of eight-hundred-million people . . ." _Carry the one . . ._

He grinned – the broad, teeth-flashing smile that could have made him the next Conrad Conn. "You skip Kelso's classes, Jackie?" She furrowed her brow; while she couldn't do the equation in her head as quick as he might have liked her theory was solid. "We know Cassie came in here, and that about eight-hundred-million people _didn't_."

_Not so solid after all, Jackie._ Sheepishly, she offered him the badge. "It's still a 'could', Sir," she muttered.

He took the shield, his gloved hand lingering on her naked fingers. "Confidence, Jackie, is the hallmark of a good Judge." He clipped the bronze to his belt. "And call me JC, for Grud's sake." He glanced down – after the crunched remains of the glass ampoule, the bloody prints of a left foot appeared on every other stair. "She's bleeding bad," he remarked.

Quartermain followed him as he trotted quickly up the first flight of stairs, his shoulder pressed to the wall to minimize gunfire vectors from above. He leaned out on the final step, peering to get a clearer view and lifting his fist in a silent communication; _halt_. She slammed her back against the wall, standing very straight and stiff as he whipped around the corner behind the barrel of his gun. He didn't even glance at her, knowing she would be where she was supposed to be, as he pointed, beckoned and extended his pinkie. _You. Move up. Take point._

She hurried forward, scurrying along the landing, skidding to a halt at the mouth of the corridor with her back to the wall, peering over her shoulder. It was dark down there and she closed her eyes for a few moments, regulating her breathing and letting her eyes adjust. She leaned out, pointing the blockrocker behind her one-handed. The empty corridor yawned sarcastically at her and she gave an audible sigh as she relaxed and swung her whole body around, a good two-handed grip on her weapon, scanning the corridor. Clear. She turned to Cornelius and beckoned.

For such a big guy, he moved with surprising swiftness and silence, somehow immobilizing the hardware-store of equipment strapped around him so it didn't rattle. She was studying his technique when he reached her and, without a word, enveloped her head in his massive hand, turning it so she looked down the corridor. Abashed, she tightened her focus, hands clenching and unclenching on the butt of her gun.

Cornelius moved past her, reaching blindly behind to clap her on the shoulder. She folded smoothly into his wake, spinning to put her hip against the wall and slide along it, attention dived between the trail of blood on the marbelite floor and any potential threats above them. The thatch of gnarled vegetation was thick here, a confusing crisscrossed mat of interwoven fibers, and more than once she jumped and started at nothing more than a partially-revealed shadow.

Procedure is the religion of the dangerous trades, and while the Judges only officially tolerated religion and many if not most were openly scornful of it, this was one orthodoxy they never wavered from. Heresy was, for all practical purposes, a capital crime. Faith in technique, reliance on process – these were their creedal statements. J-Dept's rules and protocols, regulations and processes – known among the black-and-bronze by the seeming-dismissive shorthand of 'regs' – were the second sacred text after The Law itself. They contained procedures for everything from clearing a room to interrogating perps, how to sharpen a boot knife or check a lawgiver, even down to grooming instructions and the best way to brew a pot o' joe in the Department-approved 'caf-makers. The early years of a Cadet's training were spent with regs; memorization before understanding, understanding before ability, and instinct above all. By the time a Judge hit the streets, regs should have migrated from his frontal lobes to his brainstem, tattooed there as deep as breathing.

With regs seared into their minds, into their very soul (or so the thinking went), even the least-competent Judge in the more severe, demanding or traumatic situation would be able to adjudicate in an effective, if uninspired way. No matter how stressed, tired, terrified or wounded, a Judge should always be able to fall back on instinct. The Department's collected wisdom, created in the gray calm of the Hall of Justice rather than the red-black chaos of the streets, distilled and refined. Faced with any situation, if a Judge recalled his training he might not come out alive, but The Law would certainly prevail.

Of course, blind faith was – at best – a minimum standard and – more likely, and especially for assessing Judges like Dredd – a failing grade. A Judge who never went beyond the ability to slavishly follow instructions, perennially a devout but impious follower of the religion of regs, would never rise higher than a simple patrol-rider in a relatively-calm 'block or sub-sector, clearance permanently below four, with no options but the Long Walk or Unsung at retirement. Chiefs and assessors watched for such Judges and, while it was rare indeed to fail them for their rigid orthodoxy, it might have been the kindest thing to do.

Quartermain's heterodoxy was of a different sort. A late induction, training hadn't had time to habituate to instinct. She was still _thinking_ about the process, _remembering_ the doctrine, _considering_ her actions. She knew what she had to do, and that was the problem. She spent precious mental energy on each corner, each flight of stairs, each doorway. They frayed at her nerves, wearying her, making her want to cut corners without realizing it. She second-guessed her own peculiar power, worrying about her partner as etching precognition worried at her subconscious. Although she knew she could trust him to be where he should be, she still found herself glancing back to check.

Cornelius was calm in a way she couldn't comprehend, the gold flecks in his dark eyes glittering, his face neutral. Although not a telepath, it was obvious to her his mind was virtually blank – his consciousness a zen-like tabula rasa as he instinctively followed the drill without thought. His breathing was regular, the pulse in his neck even, his movements smooth and economical. Jealousy plucked at her, emotion tweaking her already-distracted mind.

They made five levels, following the bloody footprints, before they were checked. Quartermain peered around the corner of the flight of stairs, snapping her fist behind her and feeling Cornelius freeze into immobility. Slowly, she eased around the corner, beckoning him as she did so. He loomed over her as she crouched on one knee.

The landing ended in a twisted wreckage of torn girders and shattered marbelite; the vines had wormed their way inside, their slow, inexorable power ripping plasteen and crunching rockcrete over months or years. A tangled bundle of gnarled limbs thrust upwards, coiled and braided like a gigantic cable. Abruptly, she gave a short laugh.

"What?" Cornelius' question was a sharp whisper.

She cocked her head backwards and peered up at him with a lopsided grin. "I know my name's Jackie, but I don't much fancy climbing it," she quipped.

He smiled himself, tension broken. It was a tale from his childhood, too; he suspected she'd learned it at her mother's knee, while he'd probably heard it from his father (his _mamá_ had different fairytales to drawn on). "I'm here to rescue a princess, not kill a giant," he muttered.

"Even so," she said, "how else do we get to the next level?"

Cornelius pointed with his chin. "Trail leads into the corridor there." Quartermain looked, touched the partial print in front of her, sweeping her naked fingertips across it. The blood was mostly dark and dry, only a single scab remained sticky-crimson. The footprints had been gradually getting smaller and sparser as Anderson's wounds clotted closed. Seen from the low angle it was hard to tell, but as she craned her neck and half-stood it was clear the trail turned into the main corridor of level-five of the north wing. She lifted herself fully from her crouch, glancing at the sign next to the gaping black maw of the doorway. Like the ones on other levels, it was a series of slats slotted into a frame, letters laser-etched through the brushed-gunmetal surface to the glossy black plasteen below;

**5N: Psychiatry**  
_\- Pharmacy  
\- Crisis Stabilization Unit  
\- Neurosurgery  
\- Behavioral &amp; Cognitive Therapy  
\- Electroshock  
\- Wards Psy1 thru Psy4  
\- Involuntary Commitment  
\- Nurses' Breakroom_

Someone had sprayed a mocking question in rage-red paint on the sign – _WHY SO SERIOUS?_ \- complete with a primitive rendition of an impish face with a sanity-swallowing smile. "Oh, great," muttered Quartermain.

"You think it's gonna be any crazier than the rest of this madhouse?" asked Cornelius, not unreasonably. He pulled a glowstick from his belt and snapped the chemphial with a flick of his wrist. "I'll take point." She nodded silently, following in his green-edged shadow-wake as he led the way forward.

It was abruptly dark a few steps into the corridor – although the hospital had plenty of windows, they only illuminated the patient rooms on the outer edges of the building. The sun would never reach deep inside Mercy. In the sickly-green light from the glowstick, Anderson's bloody prints were matte-black, looking like holes against the glittering floor. Chips of reclaimed glass sparkled like jewels, the moving light sliding over the uneven veins of different materials in the marbelite. Whatever wavelengths of light Tek had decided on for J-Dept glowsticks rendered some of them translucent, and so the floor was a ever-lurching, never-moving slimy ocean of fluctuating depths that made the Judges queasy as they moved gingerly forward.

Details of the corridor vanished into inky uncertainty a few yards ahead of them, but the chemlight refracted and reflected for a surprising distance, gleaming on the floor, catching on the chromed rail running at knee height, bouncing off pus-yellow signs. The corridor ran straight as a gunshot until perspective contracted it to a single vanishing point. "You think Cassandra's in here, boss?" Quartermain asked. Her voice seemed hollow in the deserted space.

"That's why I came in, Cadet," he hissed through gritted teeth.

"No!" She swallowed nervously as her exclamation echoed down the corridor, battering itself to silence. She continued in a whisper. "I mean, in the psychiatry wing? Would Rindón want her here? He's messing with her head, right?"

Cornelius shivered as he negotiated a junction – the arrowed sign showed it led to neurosurgery. Images of the zomborderies and the psi-amps bolted through their skulls, followed by Anderson staked down and splayed open like a frog, floated into his consciousness. He had to check twice to make sure the footprints didn't lead towards it. "Stay _sharp_, Cadet," he told her. "Neither of us need your imagination."

"Yessir," she agreed.

Silently, they followed the trail – the prints were becoming fainter and fainter, but her and there a gobbet followed by smears of fresher, brighter bloody showed where a scab had been torn loose. Cornelius was no expert, but he knew blood spread like a rumor – clock a guy in the nose and his shirt would be painted crimson with a shotglass-worth. It looked worse than it was but, even so, Cassie was pretty badly cut up. The trail hadn't shown unevenness – whatever injuries she had, she didn't seem to be feeling them and they weren't impacting her gait. But now they did – Cornelius signaled and crouched down, Quartermain standing guard over him, her eyes sweeping up and down the corridor.

Nominally, they were at a four-way intersection, half-way along the wing – madness to stop here, a violation of every single article of doctrine. But there was a set of double doors to the west, a sign for stairs next to them, and a gate to the east. It looked secure – the sophisticated electronic locks would be useless, of course, but there were multiple pieces of mechanical security as well; bolts and bars latched and locked with rusted padlocks. Quartermain only glanced at it long enough to read the sign – _Involuntary Commitment_ – and verify it as secure. She kept her back to it, concentrating on the doors in front of her and the long corridor to either side.

Cornelius move the glowstick back and forth, low to the ground. Anderson had stopped here, limped and taken uncertain steps, standing unevenly to avoid aggravating injuries. He plucked a shard of glass from the floor – the floors throughout Mercy were intermittently littered with trash, but this bloody spike caught his eye. The crimson was fresh as the footprints. Had she come to herself here, stood on one foot and pulled a splinter from her sole? He stood, fruitlessly wishing electronics would work here so he could use the luminol and blacklight, and tried to conjure her in his mind's eye.

His imagination dressed her, of course; what she wore for breakfast – fatigue pants and a tank, but still barefoot. Based on the bloody prints, where the glass had fallen, and her height, she'd probably put her hand against the gate to support herself. He reached out himself, running his fingers over it, hoping to find smears in the rust.

Something rushed along his arm, a freezing coldness shooting through his bones, wrapping icy tendrils around his chest. His heart beat hollow, leaping and jumping like a jackrabbit, as an icy wind blew through the gate, bringing with it his name whispered in silent-sursurration. His skin prickling with goosebumps and beading with clammy sweat. A sinking feeling in his guts, a loosening of his bowels that took all his effort to resist. Unwillingly, he staggered backwards, flailing helplessly at Quartermain and all-but-clinging to her.

She yelped herself, spinning around and shoving him away with a panicked scream. He stumbled, tripping over his own trembling feet and slumping against the wall, clutching at his chest. "Don't _do_ that, boss!" she complained, her own chest heaving. "It scares the Dok out of . . . are you okay?"

Cornelius face was slack, his eyes blank with a terrorized thousand-yard stare. His mouth opened once or twice, meaningless syllables falling from his lips. He lifted a trembling hand and passed it over his sweating face, mastering himself with an effort. He gave a shuddering sigh and nodded weakly. Quartermain slung the 'rocker and offered him her hand. After a beat, he took it and she helped him upright. The tremor in his arm, the weakness in his fingers, the sudden seeming-smallness of his massive hand disquieted her. She barely noticed the cold that seeped into her own flesh. "What the drokk was that?" she asked.

He was still breathing heavily, clutching his chest, heartbeat fluttering in his throat. "I don't know," he admitted. "All of a sudden . . ." He shuddered and shivered, slapping himself in the face. "I'm good," he said unconvincingly.

Quartermain nodded, looking down at the footprints on the floor, her gaze following them to the double doors. "She went upstairs," she realized. She blinked once or twice herself, wavering very slightly. The palm of her hand was cold-bleached white, the burn of the reversed eagle of justice beating hot red at the pace of a pulse not her own. Abruptly, she crouched and touched one of the bloodstains. She lifted her hand to show him. "Boss! It's _wet!_ We're right behind her!"

Cornelius' mind still wasn't his own, his heart hammering and brain flooded with adrenaline. In the light of the glowstick, blood was black and too-many other colors were dark. He caught her hand. Her fingers were dry, no blood on them. "Jackie," he said, "I don't . . ."

She snatched herself free and leaped to her feet. "C'mon, boss!" she exclaimed. "She's _right here!_ Let's get after her!" She didn't wait for a response but instead dived through the double doors – they swung open and then closed behind her with a _ba-du-dump!_

"Jackie!" yelped Cornelius. "Don't leave me . . ." He clenched his fist and passed a hand over his face. "Get a drokking grip, JC," he muttered to himself. "You're not a . . ."

He jumped like a startled gazelle and actually screamed at the girlish giggle that floated down the corridor. His hands working feverishly on his gun, he peered blindly into the blackness.

He could see nothing. Terror scrabbling at the inside of his chest, the darkness enveloping him with its horrible promises, he snatched a glowstick off his belt and tossed it forward. In his jittery nervousness, he forgot to activate it. It clattered to stillness in the dark. Rooted in place by unnamed terror, he waited in trembling panic.

The clack of shoes on tile. The whistle of nylon. The swish of starched cloth. The same giggle as before.

There was a _crack!_ as a heel came down on the chemphial of the glowstick with terrific precision. A pinprick sparked and grew to a sickly sphere of sonar-green. As the light expanded it revealed delicate feet enclosed in white frakk-me-pumps, attached to well-turned calves and shapely thighs wrapped in laddered stockings. The women giggled as they saw the terrified Judge, exchanging knowing looks at they sashayed forward.

There was a grotesque beauty to them, an alluring horror of visceral appeal. Long-limbed and curvacious, with wasp-waists and broad hips, cantilevered breasts pushed together to make a cavernous cleavage squeezed into almost-indecent nurses' smocks. The skirts' hems had ridden to an inch or three above the racy-lacy tops of their stockings, the outlines of garter belts and knickers clear through the taut fabric.

Despite himself, Cornelius smelted the last bits of his courage to bravado in the crucible of nervousness. "Stay classy, Judge Death," he quipped.

In another world, they would have been pink-and-white-and-blonde lovelies unsuited for the rigors of medicine, but automatic-hires for a grindbar in the shadow of Mercy, catering to a particular fetish. But here, in the queasy green darkness, with their uniforms torn and stained with blood and other bodily fluids best-not-guessed-at, stockings laddered and heels broken, crimson-glossed nails chipped, bottle-blonde hair a filthy birds-nest, lurching forward in a disgusting parody of the catwalk wiggle, they were a grotesque horror.

They pressed themselves against each other; pawing, caressing, whispering as if sharing secrets. "Oh, look . . ." ". . . a patient! We should . . ." ". . . take good care . . ." ". . . of him. Perhaps . . ." ". . . a sponge bath?"

Cornelius wanted to flee – to run back along the corridor, to dive through the double doors after Quatermain – but his legs were jelly and his feet rooted to the ground. "S-s-stay back!" he quavered, "I'm wuh-wuh-w-warning you!"

They all giggled as one but spoke in their back-and-forth, finishing-each-others-sentences way. "He's warning . . ." ". . . us. Do you . . ." ". . . think we should . . ." ". . . listen or . . ." ". . . not?" He lifted the blockrocker to his shoulder; the barrel shook more than his voice. "Oh, no . . ." ". . . honey. It won't . . ." ". . . work. You see . . ."

With a yelp of fear, he pulled the trigger. Shots stitched across their corseted middles. Bullets punched through ridiculous figures, crimson flowers blooming on dirty-white soil. They staggered backwards, but didn't fall.

". . . you cannot . . ." ". . . kill what does . . ." ". . . not live!"

As one, they lurched forward, broken nails reaching for him, ulcerated tongues lasciviously licking lesioned lips. "What the drokk are you?" Cornelius sobbed. Again, they giggled.

"We are . . ." ". . . his. It is . . ." ". . . more than . . ." ". . . we deserve."

He pulled the trigger again, but terror had robbed him of so much of his skill – the hammer fell on an empty chamber. They tittered eagerly and flung themselves at him, wrapping lithe bodies around his limbs and bearing him to the ground.

He shrieked, flailing wildly, losing control of his body, a spreading wetness hot in his fatigues. Shame mingled horribly with terror as he screwed his eyes shut, thrashing his body frantically. They writhed atop him in a giggling gaggle, delighting in the bulk beneath him, the way his fear-weakened muscles bunched ineffectually, pinning him and smothering him beneath their impure flesh.

The locks unlatched one by one, the gate swinging open with a sepulchral groan, infinite blackness yawning like the abyss. A presence lurking beyond the opened portal came closer. A distrustful mind of wheels-within-wheels, of layered secrets, of deception and falsehoods, nuanced meanings and everything that wasn't _technically speaking_ a lie. A mind broken by fear and driven through it to the other side. The remains of what had once been a man that was, in every respect, _projecting_.

A figure stepped through the portal, looming tall and cadaverous above the heaving mass wrestling on the floor. Dressed in a busted straightjacket trailing restrains over scab-black scrubs, it lifted scrawny arms and spread them wide. Its face, veiled in shadow, was shuttered as an isocube. Abruptly, it snapped open. Its gaze pierced Cornelius, looking through the black-and-bronze, through the badge, through his flesh and obfuscations, beyond his own awareness to whatever lay in the unexamined darkness of his heart. When it spoke, it did so with his own voice and in the language he'd learned at his mother's knee;

"_Mirar en la cara del miedo, pequeño Juan._"

**A/n :** Comic readers will, of course, recognize the character being introduced here – although I have _completely_ changed his origin and look (although, of course, I have changed Judge Death's too!) But, yes . . . as Jackie said; death, fear, fire, disease . . .

And, of course, it's now made _explicit_ what ethnicity Cornelius is!

Any comments, please leave a review – even if it is just a very brief positive or negative!


	12. Engram IV

**Prog 12 : Engram IV**

Still wearing her pretty party dress and with the gaily-printed cardboard cone now-askew atop her freshly-curled hair, Cassandra bit her lip and gathered her courage. She was crouched at the very tippy-top of the fourth flight of stairs, clinging to the post and peering around the corner of the banister, looking nervously at the level five landing. She didn't _like_ level five – she wasn't _frightened_ of it, of course. She just . . . didn't like it. It made her uncomfy; the uneven, off-kilter, unanchored thoughts that floated through the doorway. She'd never stopped long enough to read the signs on this level – although she'd read all the signs on the others, learning them by heart, as she climbed up and down the stairs. It was a game, she told herself, a game and _not_ because she was frightened – run as fast as you can past the doorway, not looking down the corridor, not looking back, or the _monsters_ would reach out and get you.

She inhaled, held her breath and steeled herself. She shifted her hand on the post and the string slipped through her little fist, the brightly-colored birthday balloon slipping from her grasp and accelerating smoothly upwards. She watched it go, bobbing along the underside of the level above and then bouncing off the edge, vanishing up, up and away into the heights of the atrium. She felt a sudden pang of loss.

_Whatever_. It was just a balloon. There were lots of balloons left downstairs – in the cafeteria, where her birthday party had been. It had been fun – there had been cake, and ice-kreem, and sosijes-on-sticks, and all kinds of yummy things to eat. There had been presents, too – a doll, and a stuffed gitaskog, and a fancy watch with a screen, and . . . and she couldn't remember them all.

But there hadn't been any games, or any other children. And she _knew_ there were other children here; at night, when it was quiet, she could reach out and touch them. They were alone, and they were uncomfy, and she tired to soothe them – but she couldn't. They were _frightened_ of her, frightened of Uncle Fausto. They shied away from her and hid, their little minds curling into themselves and all-but-vanishing.

Uncle Fausto had been at her party, of course, and that had been fun. But he'd had to leave – an orderly had come and whispered in his ear and he'd looked worried and put down his fork and got up, told Nurse Courtney to take care of his special girl, and left.

Uncle Fausto had left most of his cake; he'd got a corner piece, with lots of frosting, and it seemed a shame to waste it. Cassandra had picked up his plate and slipped as quietly as she could off her chair – she'd go after Uncle Fausto and bring him his cake – but the fork tumbled and clattered to the floor. Nurse Courtney spun around.

"Now you sit right down there, missy!" she admonished. Cassandra still didn't like Nurse Courtney, even after all the months and months she'd been here. It wasn't just the way she dressed or acted with the cute orderlies and doctors (and even Uncle Fausto), or even the way she treated the other nurses (some of them were prettier than her – but when Cassandra told her that she'd been _very_ angry). It was that Cassandra _knew_ she was taking care of her daddy. She never said he wanted to see her, never asked if she wanted to see him. She always said he was doing well, and that she would take _good_ care of him – better than her mummy had.

That had made Cassandra very angry, and Nurse Courtney was sick for about a week afterward and Cassandra didn't see her and when she _did_ come back it was with the side of her head shaved and a bandage on it. Uncle Fausto hadn't said anything, but he'd looked pleased. Barney had asked her if she'd hit Nurse Courtney. Cassandra hadn't said anything either, but Barney knew and he'd been disappointed and told her it wasn't nice to hit people.

Cassandra had bit her lip and not said a word, but she'd remembered Uncle Fausto telling her it was alright to hit naughty people, and Nurse Courtney had been _very_ naughty with everything she'd done. Nurse Courtney hadn't been any _nicer_ to her since then, but she'd been less _nasty_. Cassandra liked that.

"Didn't you hear Med-Judge Rindón?" Nurse Courtney demanded. "He told you to stay put!"

"He said no such thing!" snapped Cassandra, pert and precocious. "He told _you_ to take care of his special girl. That's _me_ – I'm his special girl, so you have to take care of me!" She grabbed a clean fork. "I'm going to take him his cake, and then I'm going to see my daddy!"

"Why, you little . . . !" Nurse Courtney fumed and strode towards her, her silly heels clacking on the tile and her silly little skirt squeaking. Cassandra reached out to the mind of the hunky orderly – the one with the dark eyes and the blonde hair and the stubbly chin, the one who went to the hospital gym _every_ day and had the arms as big around as Cassandra's middle, the one all the pretty nurses liked. She knew he thought Nurse Courtney was pretty – most of the orderlies did, even if a lot of them thought she was a slut – and it was really easy to fiddle with him just enough so he stepped towards her and slipped an arm around her waist. "Derek? What the Dok are you . . . ?"

He jerked her towards him – he was so much bigger and stronger she was lifted off her feet and gasped as she stumbled into his arms. "Hey, cutie," he said, "how's about you and me find a linen closet and go do mummy-and-daddy things, huh?" He crushed his lips down on hers.

Nurse Courtney had struggled ineffectually for a second, and then the lessons every Mega City mother taught her daughter kicked in and Derek crashed to the ground groaning and clutching between his legs. By then, of course, Cassandra had slipped – smug and pleased with herself – out of the cafeteria and into the atrium, reaching out easily to find Uncle Fausto high above her. Around level eight or nine, she guessed, in the north wing.

She'd scampered up the first flights of stairs, balloon bobbing in her hand, precious slice of cake clutched in the other, and skidded to a nervous halt on level five. Now it was time to play the game; hold your breath and run past quickly-quickly without looking back or the monsters with the see-saw minds would get you. Those were the rules. That was the game.

She played it because she _wanted_ to play it. Level five just made her uncomfy. She wasn't scared.

She gulped down a bit more air and, terrified, ran.

She didn't let out the breath she was holding until she was half-way to level six, didn't stop running until she was on level seven. She doubled over, gasping and panting, legs and arms all trembly, party hat slid sideways and hair a mess. The frosting had stuck the cake to the plate, but the fork had clattered off somewhere below. For dreadful moments, she agonized.

"It's been on the floor, now," she decided. "It's _dirty_. No point in going back to get it." She nodded decisively. "Don't need a fork to eat cake." Resolutely, she climbed another flight of stairs.

She hadn't been on level eight before – she'd climbed past it, of course, on the way to the upper levels where she lived and played games with Uncle Fausto, but she'd never gone north into the wing itself. She'd learned the words on the sign, but didn't know what they meant – she couldn't even say some of them out loud. As she always did, she tried to sound it out. "Ped . . . peedy . . . peddy-arty . . ." That was the big, bold title – the some of the words listed underneath were easier, because she saw them so often. "Pharmacy. Treatment. Surgery. Wards pee-ee-dee one through pee-ee-dee six. Con . . . coval . . . con-valve-sence and recovery."

Uncle Fausto was in there, down the corridor. And the other children were there, too, their little minds uncomfy and untidy. There was something odd about them, something she didn't have words for. Most people's minds were untidy – Uncle Fausto's wasn't, and she hoped hers wasn't – but the children's minds were _very_ untidy. They were bright, like Uncle Fausto's – little lamps in the darkness. Other minds weren't as bright – or, if they were, they weren't bright in the same _way_. They were bright like mirrors or the chintzy sparklies her mummy used to wear before she'd had to sell them. The children's minds glowed with their own light. Some of them, the most uncomfy and most untidy, were the brightest. She wondered why that was.

She marched forward, shoulders squared and resolute. There were nurses and orderlies bustling about, like everywhere else in the hospital. Some were pushing gurneys – little ones, with children no older than her on them. She watched as one was pushed past her, the small figure limp and still, his thoughts a fading spark. She stopped and followed him with her eyes and mind, watched until he vanished out of sight around a corner and then watched until he vanished completely. "'Bye," she whispered.

It wasn't her first time seeing death. For children in the 'blocks, death had been a constant companion since before they could walk, the idea familiar before they had words for it. Gang violence, robberies gone wrong, suicides and – of course – illness. So many mummies and daddies had died. Uncle Fausto called it 'cancer' and said it was very common in the 'blocks near the edge of the city. Her daddy had cancer, and it was difficult to make him well. It hurt her daddy – he was in so much pain, Uncle Fausto said, pain that medicine couldn't fix. Recently, in the evenings, when he was tired from a hard day's work and the two of them ate a dinner of noodles together alone, he'd started talking about how what doctors had to do wasn't always the kindest thing or the best thing. He'd been so upset that Cassandra had sat on his knee and cuddled his neck and promised him she would do the kindest thing and the best thing. He'd smiled a watery smile and kissed her forehead like her daddy used to do back when he loved her and told her she wasn't ready.

She wanted so much to be ready, to make Uncle Fausto proud of his special girl, and had played his games harder and not complained when she got tired, not even when she thought and thought so much that her head went red. He'd been proud of her – he told her so – but she still wasn't ready. "That's why your daddy doesn't want to see you," he'd admitted to her after one particularly tough game, "because you're not ready. Remember, Judges do bad things because they are special – and you want to be special, don't you, Cassandra?"

She did so want to be Uncle Fausto's special girl, even if that meant she had to do bad things.

She padded deeper into the pediatric wing – she could pluck the word from the doctors' and nurses' and orderlies' minds around her now, although she had no idea what it meant – searching for Uncle Fausto. There was a door ahead of her, a closed door, one of the ones secured with the fancy electronic locks that needed the microchiped badges to open. It was labeled "Surgery". Uncle Fausto wasn't in there, she knew that, but children were – she could feel their minds beyond the door, their thoughts untidy and uncomfy, thick with blood-washed fear. She stopped there for a while and stood on her tippy-toes, trying to peer through the round windows.

She wasn't big enough. She stretched a little more, eking out another quarter inch of height at the expense of pain in her calves. She stumbled and slipped, falling against the door and smearing cake down it. Tears beaded in her eyes and her lip trembled – now what was she going to do?

A psychic cry echoed down the corridor – clear and haunting, piercing through her own petty emotion. A cry of pain and despair and nightmarish loneliness, an agony that went beyond mere pain to primal fear of the most horrific destruction. _It's eating me! It's eating me!_

Grim curiosity sucked her forward through her fear. She clenched her fists and gathered her courage, gingerly walking down the corridor and around the corner and through the door marked "Recovery". The room was long and low, brightly lit and filled with narrow hospital cots separated by folding screens. There was a small figure in each bed – children like her – connected by a tangled skein of wires and tubes to strange machines. Their bright minds groaned, bobbing unanchored on a sea of injury.

There were a few grownups in the room – nurses and orderlies, with the tall figures of Uncle Fausto and his doctor friend at the far end. Cassandra walked slowly towards them, looking to the left and the right as she passed each bed, taking it all in. The bandages soaked through with crimson, the copper-sharp scent of blood and the vinegar-pine smell of antiseptic, the moans and groans she could hear and feel.

One of the children lifted his head as she passed and she gasped – his face was a bulbous horror, a grotesquely swollen mass of crimson tumors. Patient blue eyes stared with wearied despair out of that hideous ruin. She shrank back as he reached for her, misshapen lips trying to articulate some word. His mind was foggy, floating in a cloud of drugs.

She bumped into one of the screens, spinning around and yelping as she came face-to-faces with a bandage-wrapped lump out of which four arms, four legs and two heads poked. The two faces were identical – freckle-faced girls younger than her, their heads shaved to stubble and with thick cables and pipes looping from one cranium to the other. The skin where they joined was red and inflamed, pinkish-green fluid pumping gloopily through the transparent tubes from one brain to the other. "Will you be . . ." ". . . our friend?" the thing asked.

Cassandra's hand flew to her mouth and nose – as much to stop herself screaming as to shield herself from the stench of putrefaction. The conjoined horror writhed uselessly on the bed, unable to use its many limbs in concert to move itself forward. Bloody pus oozed between the stained bandages onto the sheets. There were two minds, bright and similar, but they were being pressed into one, like two candles pushed together, hot wax squishing into a malformed mess that would only fuse when the flames were extinguished.

Cassandra shook her head and staggered backwards, turning so she faced straight ahead, no longer looking to either side at the children in the beds. She didn't want to see them, didn't want to look, but she could not help but catch terrible glimpses out of the corner of her eye, even turning slightly before she caught herself. Limbless children with their amputated members sustained in nutrient vats, twitching with a psychic imperative she could taste; blinded children with plaited bundles of cables screwed into weeping eyesockets; thrashing or screaming or – worst of all – silent and still children connected to drip-drip-dripping bags of poison-colored IV fluid. All of their minds uncomfy, bright like hers but untidy and untrained, horrified and uncomprehending and just wanting it all to end.

She couldn't stand it. She put her head down so she could only see her feet and just ran towards the end of the room, towards Uncle Fausto and his friend. She didn't scream or cry; it wasn't as if she was _frightened_. It just made her _uncomfy_. She didn't like it. She wanted to be with Uncle Fausto and tell him the children were _hurt_. Uncle Fausto would know what to do. He would make them better.

She ran headlong into someone, banging her temple. She staggered back, bruised and hurt, stumbling onto her tush in a sobbing heap as the man she'd run into swore and flinch-limped away. "What the frakk?"

"Mustn't . . . mustn't say . . . bad words," she whimpered, little shoulders heaving, snot and tears dripping from her nose. She rubbed her head, feeling the growing lump, and cried anew.

"For Grud's sake, Fausto . . . what the Dok is _she_ doing here?"

"I'm his special girl!" she wailed, clenching her fists and drumming her heels on the floor. This was Uncle Fausto's doctor friend – he called him 'Alex', but the nurses and orderlies called him 'Med-Judge Yersin'. Cassandra didn't call him anything – he wasn't a bad man, but he wasn't nice like Uncle Fausto. She didn't stop crying until Uncle Fausto's arms enfolded her and lifted her up with a grunt of effort.

"Oooff!" he exclaimed. "My special girl's getting big!" He jutted his pelvis and set her on his hip, wiping her tears away with a handkerchief. "How old are you now?" he asked.

"You . . . you know how old I am," she sobbed. "It's my birthday. I'm _eight_."

"And are you a big girl?" he asked meaningfully. "Because big girls don't cry, do they?" He bent his head to peer at her. She sniffled and sniveled. "Do they, Cassandra?" he repeated.

There was bronze in the drawl now, his smile wintry and his blue eyes icier than normal. Cassandra swallowed and shook her head. She wiped her snotty nose with the back of her hand. "N . . . no, Uncle Fausto," she hiccuped.

He smiled. "Well, isn't that just dandy?" He set her down. "You shouldn't cry, Cassandra – not now you're a big girl. Why were you crying? Is it because your daddy wasn't here for your birthday?" He shook his head. "I was there, wasn't I?"

She nodded – why _hadn't_ her daddy been there, or come to see her at all? Something nagged at her, but Uncle Fausto didn't give her chance to think. "Now, what are you doing here, Cassandra? This isn't a . . . _comfy_ place for my special girl to be."

Yersin coughed politely. "Fausto, I hardly think this is . . ."

"Just a second, Alex." He spoke without turning, smile never wavering. "Cassandra?"

"I came to bring you cake." It sounded silly when she said it. "Uncle Fausto, why are those children uncomfy? What are they _doing_ to them? You should make them stop."

Uncle Fausto's smile widened, but Cassandra knew his moods and expressions and she could tell a lesson was coming. She opened her ears so she could really listen to it. "Now, why should I do that?" he asked softly.

"They don't _like_ it, it's not _nice_."

"But since when was that any reason to stop, Cassandra?" he asked. "What have I taught you?"

Her face crumpled into uncertainty. "That I'm . . . your special girl? But, Uncle Fausto . . ."

"That you're _special_, Cassandra. That _we're_ special. And we do can things to people for their own good, even if they don't know it, or like it, or want it. That's what being special means, it means the rules don't apply."

"But _they_'re special, too!" she exclaimed. "They're special, like me. Like _you_. It's not . . ."

As if a mask had been ripped clear, Rindón hissed and snarled, jabbing a finger into her terrified face. "They're _not_ like us, they're _nothing_ like us! They're weak and they're pathetic and they're . . . oh, baby girl, I'm sorry, I just . . ."

Cassandra clenched her fists as tears streamed down her face. "I'm _not_ a baby!" she screamed. "I'm a _big_ girl, a _special_ girl, and you're being _mean_ to me and it's not . . ."

"I know, I know – and I'm sorry," he assured her. "I really am. But they _aren't_ like you; they're special, but they're not special like you are." He crouched down, hands enfolding her little shoulders, but her face was wary as if his spell needed to be cast again. "Not all special people are the same," he explained. "I remember down in Texas City, when I was a kid. On the shores of Lake Louisiana, where I grew up. There were special children there, too – all of the radiation and pollution in the lake, pretty much everyone was special, even if you couldn't see it. But none of them were special like me. Like _you_. Do you understand, Cassandra? Do you think I _like_ to do this? All the blood and the horror and the effort? I do it for _you_, so I can learn how to make you even more special. So you can help me do the right things for the city. My special girl understands, doesn't she?"

Slowly, she nodded through her tears. "Yuh . . . yes, Uncle Fausto. I understand . . . I think. But surely . . ."

He stood but kept his hand firmly on her shoulder. "You just sit tight, Cassandra," he said. "Med-Judge Yersin and I need to talk, but then I want you to meet someone. I think she'll help you understand, okay?" She nodded as he turned to his colleague. "It's a shame – he was one of the better subjects."

Med-Judge Yersin had whiskers and a mustache he stroked nervously. As he talked he glanced between Uncle Fausto and his patient. The child was lying in bed inside a little room-within-a-room, a funny room like a tent with the corners made of tubes all slotted together like scaffolding and the walls made of see-through plastic. He was moaning weakly, writhing on the bed, connected to machines by wires and tubes with a mask over his mouth and nose. He was wearing a flimsy hospital gown and his thin arms and legs were crusted with moist black scabs, the crimson edges weeping vomit-green pus. The sheets were sticky with it, saturated with contaminated blood and serum. Multiple fingers and toes were missing, gnawed down to the knuckles by whatever infection roiled within him. "I don't know if the infection will prove fatal," Yersin assured Rindón, "but I think the pathogen's drug-resistance means . . ."

"Oh, I quite agree." Rindón casually cut him off. "It's too risky to keep it on the general ward."

"So I can begin hospice-quarantine procedures?"

"Absolutely. Draw up the paperwork and . . . Cassandra?"

She hadn't followed the conversation – Uncle Fausto had been using his grown-up voice, the one he used when he needed to talk to someone when she was there. But something had caught her attention, something other than the background hubbub of pain and suffering. Blocking out the child's psionic screams, she was aware of a slow, faint, bubbling imperative beneath them. _Eat. Divide. Grow. Spread. Eat. Divide. Grow. Spread . . ._ Hunger without appetite, determination without volition, a goal without understanding. But deep within in it, a mere ungerminated seed in the mass of rotting mulch was . . . "I don't think it _likes_ you," she said softly.

Yersin gave a slightly sickly smile. "He's in pain, he doesn't know what's happening to him. He's . . ."

"No," she said crisply, still staring through the plastic wall and the child her own age to whatever roiled within him. She looked up at Yersin, eyes still red with tears but determination glinting in them. "_None_ of the children like you – either of you, or any of the staff. But that's only because they don't understand," she added quickly, with a nervous glance at Rindón. "That's not what I'm talking about. _It_ doesn't like you. You've stopped it, you're trapping it." She crumpled her brow in worry. "If it knew what you were planning . . ."

Yersin glanced from her to Rindón and back again. "What the Dok are you talking about?" he demanded.

"It's _special_," she said succinctly. "It's like us."

She watched as Uncle Fausto pressed his hand against the plastic wall, closing his eyes. She took some satisfaction in that – she'd grown out of having to do that _weeks_ before. "It's so _faint_," he murmured. "How did you . . . ?" She beamed proudly and he nodded. "You're my special girl." He turned to Yersin, addressing him in terse sentences. "Quarantine it, keep it under observation, study it – I want answers."

"It's _mutated_?" asked Yersin. "It's _psychic_?"

Uncle Fausto laughed. "Feeling left out, Alex?" he mocked.

"Fausto!" he exclaimed. "We know _nothing_ about psychic bacteria – literally _nothing_! I don't know what kind of risks we'd be taking, what quarantine procedures would be necessary, if any would be sufficient." He was babbling, words tripping over each other. "I don't know if the psypressor would even _work_ – does it have a central nervous system? I mean, I know it doesn't, but . . ."

"You're afraid," Cassandra realized.

Yersin slashed a withering glance in her direction, but it was Rindón he addressed. "Drokking right I'm afraid," he snapped. "Fausto, this is totally uncharted territory – we'd have literally _no idea_ what we were getting into!"

She shook her head. "You're afraid of _us_."

For a second, Yersin just stared at her, the panic in his eyes telling her everything she needed to know. He glanced at Rindón. "Fausto, I . . ."

"Contain it, quarantine it, study it." Uncle Fausto softly repeated his order. Reluctantly, Yersin nodded, moving away yet turning back when Rindón spoke again. "But keep it alive, Alex," he warned with a silvery smile. "We're _doctors_, after all. C'mon, Cassandra – let's leave Med-Judge Yersin to his work."

He put his hand on her shoulder again and she let herself be led away, through a set of double doors and up two-floors of an internal stairwell, the risers and treads of the poured-'crete steps an unappealing gray. The space felt cool and damp, a chilly wind softly spiraling down the coiled shaft. "Uncle Fausto," she asked plaintively, "why is he afraid of us? What did we _do_ to him?" Uncle Fausto smiled.

"Well," he drawled accusingly, "why are _you_ afraid?" She popped her mouth open, but he plowed over her remonstrations. "Can't lie to me, Cassandra," he told her. "You're scared. But it's okay to be scared – being brave doesn't mean you aren't scared, it means you do what you have to do anyway. And you're my big brave girl, right?"

She gulped and nodded. "Y-yes, Uncle Fausto. But . . ."

"People're afraid of things they don't understand, Cassandra – didn't my clever girl just say that? You don't understand what I'm doing here, why I'm doing it, so you . . ."

"I do!" she exclaimed. "I do, I do understand, Uncle Fausto! I _do_! You're trying to make them better, to make them more special, so they can help the city, help the people who _aren't_ special. You're a Judge, that's what Judges do . . . even if people don't understand."

Proud, he smiled at her, pushing a door open so she could walk through into another brightly lit corridor. It was busy here, nurses and white-coated doctors bustling around, plenty of big Judges looming in black-and-bronze, scuffed and smirched with dust and more from the streets. Instinctively nervous around The Law, Cassandra shrank towards Rindón, her hand tight as it clung to his. But he shook his head and guided her directly into the path of a Judge who had to step aside for her. "So _you_ can help the city, Cassandra," he said. "You'll be a Judge one day, the first of a new breed. You'll show them all."

She gaped and gasped. "I don't _wanna_ be a Judge, Uncle Fausto!" she exclaimed. She shook her head furiously. "Don't wanna, don't wanna," she muttered.

"Hey." It was a big Judge who'd spoken – his arm was stripped to the elbow, glove tugged off and sleeve shredded, white tendons glinting amid sliced flesh. He was leaning against the wall, a nurse with goggly-lenses over her eyes swiftly stitching. If it hurt, he gave no sign. "Neither did I, kid." Rindón glared at him with narrowed eyes, but he simply shrugged. "It's the truth, doc."

Rindón smiled icily. "Quite," he said crisply. He looked down at the girl at his side. "Ain't about what you _want_, Cassandra," he told her. "It's about _duty_. To whom much is given, much will be demanded. You are _special_, do you understand?"

She nodded. "But . . . I don't see why it has to . . ."

He groaned in frustration. "Because the clay doesn't _co-operate_ with the potter, Cassandra! The plasteen resists the engineer. That _strength_ is what makes them valuable. And even bronze must be smelted, must be tempered, must have the dross driven from it." He ground the words out through gritted teeth.

She flinched back from him. "I don't _understand_, Uncle Fausto!" she wailed. "Why are you angry with me?"

He sighed and shook his head. "I ain't angry with my special girl," he assured her. "I'm never angry with you – I just want you to understand, that's all."

"I _do_ want to understand," she promised. "I do, but . . ."

He sighed wearily. "But _what_, Cassandra?"

"But it's _hard_, Uncle Fausto!" she exclaimed. "It's hard and it's complicated and I'm _only eight_. I think sometimes you forget I'm just a kid, Uncle Fausto," she added, pouting to show she was serious. He laughed.

"I guess I do at that," he admitted.

"So, who am I meeting?" she asked. She raised an eyebrow. "You said I would be meeting someone, someone who would help me understand."

"So I did," agreed Uncle Fausto, opening a door and gesturing Cassandra through. She stepped into a private room off the main corridor, gasping and clasping a hand to her mouth despite herself. The woman lying wounded in the bed was nude but for bandages, blood seeping through them, one arm missing, the wedge of a gauze-wrapped shoulder jutting awkwardly. Her crimson hair was partially-shaved, her skull pierced by wires and tubes. She was immobile, her chest lifting and dropping shallowly.

Unbidden, morbidly fascinated, Cassandra edged forward – the room was dark, lights off, the only illumination coming from the weird machine enmeshed with the woman's mind, slowly pulsing with a blue-green light. As she came closer to it, something washed over Cassandra. It felt like the tingle in her brain she got when Uncle Fausto let her have just-one-more Pepsi. On her wrist, the face of her new watch fritzed, crashing to static and then silence. She barely glanced at it as she turned to Uncle Fausto. "Who is she?" she asked.

At the sound of her voice, the woman in the bed opened her eyes, an unmistakable but disquieting certainty of knowledge in the haunted green gaze. Rindón smiled, a strange formality to the introduction. "Cassandra? Judge Vivienne Adeen Brandt," he said succinctly.

Cassandra nodded politely, patiently waiting for something that didn't come. "Aren't you going to introduce me?" she asked eventually.

Rindón laughed. "Oh, she already knows," he assured her.

**A/n :** It's been a while, but I am back! I have been working with a _very_ talented artist to develop some pictures of the Dark Judges (once they apotheosize into their final forms). His work is absolutely tremendous, and I hope to share it with you all soon. But, for now, you can check out the description document I wrote for them (if you don't mind _spoilers!_) on my DeviantArt page (link in my profile) … perhaps even offer suggestions and ideas! And you can check out other pictures etc. I have on my DeviantArt page as well.

Just a note on these "Engram" chapters – perceptive readers will notice the tense used (past vs pluperfect) varies greatly, and the focus of the chapter jumps about, back and forth, not forming a consistent narrative. This is a deliberate choice to indicate the unreliable nature of Anderson's memories as they return, as well as the fact a lot of this story is retrospective (even more perceptive readers will notice a number of chapters begin _in media res_ and then have a pluperfect portion which describes what happened previously – again, highlighting the retrospective nature of much of this story).

Anyway – enough details! If you have enjoyed this, even if you haven't, please leave a review!


	13. Lively Little Firebrand

**Prog 13 : Lively Little Firebrand**

Quartermain took the stairs three at a time, hurling herself upwards. She kept her head tilted back, neck craned and attention above her, only glancing down when she reached level six. Anderson hadn't left the stairwell; bloody footprints – crisp, sharp, clear-as-day to her mind if not her eyes – continued up the stairs. She sprinted onward, climbing to the landing at seven-and-a-half before she skidded to a halt and dropped to one knee, snapping the blockrocker to her shoulder.

Bursting through the level eight doorway were four or five zomborderies, a chittering tide of gnarled flesh and bone scratching and scraping at the walls and floor with filthy claws. She set her jaw and mind, choosing her targets carefully, holding as tightly to doctrine as she did the gun, cutting them down with precise three-round bursts. Most collapsed on the landing above, one tumbling backwards through the doorway, but the final one fell forward, plummeting towards her, flailing and screaming.

She leaped backwards as she shucked the mag. The thing was still going to hit her – her back was against the wall and there was nowhere to go. She swung, hard. There was a sickening and satisfying _krunch_ as the mag crushed its temple. She dropped her shoulder and barged it to the side, reaching behind her hip for another pair of taped magazines.

_Uh-oh, three &amp; four . . ._

These were the . . . _interesting_ magazines, the ones packed with the eagle's-share of specialty munitions. She didn't remember exactly what she'd loaded – she had a professional bad-memory when it came to that sort of thing (_knowing_ what you'd only half-predicted gave you a fatal sense of over-confidence more often than not) – but she'd been aware since she entered Mercy the spug would hit the fan when she got to them.

_Aware_. Not prepared.

She slammed the mag home, glancing up the stairwell. No visible threats. Gunfire echoes battered themselves to silence against the walls, her ears still ringing despite the plugs. Even so, she could hear claws pattering on the 'crete stairs below her. Either training or precognition – it didn't matter which – made her save her left hand. She hooked the bolt in a belt loop and shoved down, racking the gun as she leaned to the side and peered downward.

Zomborderies, skittering upwards, checked by the corpse – more by hunger than awkwardness at having to clamber over if, if the truth be known. "Drokking degenerates," she muttered, using that free hand to grab a grenade from her belt – a basic frag, nothing big, just enough to hash them into muncemeat. She pulled the pin with her teeth and tossed it. It bounced down the stairs, pinging off the first, then the third, then the sixth, then . . .

_Boom!_ She was half-way up the next flight when the muffled blastwave of explosion hit her, hot and hard, in the back. Wet gobbets of something splattered against her boots and the sickening stench of roast meat was sucked into her nostrils along with wisps of greasy smoke. She ignored it all, moving warily over the corpses. One of them shifted – maybe it was just her weight as she clambered over them, but it paid to be sure. She shot it through the head. Neither the corpse nor the round did anything unusual.

_Thirty-round mags, Jackie. One down, fifty-nine to go._

The level eight landing was a gore-slicked mess – no way could she read tracks, certainly not in the queasy half-light of a glowing chemphial. Doctrine – not to mention prudence – demanded she secure the door, as well as check the corridor for prints. _Eonni_ was close – so close she could practically _taste_ it. Quartermain wasn't a telepath, but the connection she and Anderson shared was enough for her to be aware of her presence. Keyed to a pitch of hyperawareness, Quartermain's precognition was practically screaming at her – _soon, soon, soon!_ Finding Anderson, grabbing her and pulling her back, arm around her waist, the older woman sobbing and leaning on her as she was led away . . .

The vision eclipsed reality in her perception. She came back to herself as she stepped over the zomborderly's corpse jamming the door open, almost-surprised to see not Anderson but enemies – more zomborderies – lurching down the corridor. The smell on this level was stronger, the spoiled-copper stench of fresh carnivore-excrement and the sickly-sweet miasma of putrefying flesh. She opened fire, bullets systematically cutting them down.

_ Four. Seven. Ten. Unlucky for you . . ._

Threat neutralized – at least for the moment; she'd slaughtered the first rank but there were others behind them, checked for the few moments it would take them to shove the corpses aside – she spun around, dropping to one knee, peering around the open door. It wouldn't protect her against gunfire, but it wasn't as if her targets were armed.

The blue-green bolt of psionic energy that chicaned around the door was utterly unexpected. It slammed her in the chest, sending her sprawling winded backwards, stars dancing in her vision and every nerve screaming. She shook her head and spat – her teeth were tingling, mouth prickly, tasting like it was full of pre-War pennies. Bloody sputum hit the deck as she lifted the gun and pointed it between her feet at the horror crawling towards her.

It was a tide of body parts – disembodied and amputated arms, legs, hands, even a pulsating mass of knotted viscera squishing vermiform along the floor. They hopped or slithered or clawed their way forward, stumps of limbs leaving bloody smears in their wake. The parts were mismatched and incomplete, some mostly skeletal, others festooned with hanks of desiccated meat. In the center, supported as if riding a sedan chair by a grotesque framework of interlaced forearms, skittering spider-like on dozens of tickling fingers, was a limbless torso and head. It ended in a ragged fringe of ripped abdominal muscles, loops of bowels coiled tightly around elbows holding it upright.

The thing turned its haggard face towards her, bloodshot eyes glowing turquoise and chained lightning crackling around its temples. Quartermain felt a psychic imperative slither over her, her own limbs twitching with a will not her own. Behind her, the corpses of the zomborderies jerked, disjointing with a series of disgusting pops and rips as bones unlocked and skin tore. Writhing fingers scrabbled at her neck and shoulders.

Swallowing her revulsion, she jackknifed to her feet, kicking out, sending still-warm limbs scattering. They grasped at her ankles, clawed their way up her calves and thighs, hooking digits into the straps and buckles of her armor and belt. It took all her effort to ignore them, to concentrate on the hideous arachnid orchestrating the assault. She put a three-round burst into its chest.

_ Fourteen, fifteen . . ._

The first two shots whined as they struck a blue-green psionic shield, deflected Grud-knows-where by a shimmering forcefield of bruised glass expanding outward from its bulbous head. The third detonated in a blossoming fireball. The unmistakable explosion of a hi-ex round slammed the air from her lungs and flung her backwards once again, the impact cushioned by a tangled mat of flopping limbs.

_Sweet sixteen_.

She was gasping, nearly stupefied, ears ringing – but the thing was worse off. The explosion had blown its flesh-chariot apart, throwing it into the ceiling and bringing down tiles, wires, struts and insulation with it. Its minions flailed pathetically, limp-wristed hands falling open, not a threat for a few precious seconds while it lolled, brain-battered and stunned amid the detritus of demolition. She sighted carefully and took a single shot – its head exploded like a blister, gobbets of cerebral matter splattering the walls.

She rolled upright, shaking limbs off her, uniform smeared with somewhat-fresh blood. Boots slipping on a treacherous scree of slimy body parts, she felt bile rise in her gorge, the back of her throat burning with stomach acid. She actually retched and heaved, tongue protruding, a thin strand of glutinous yellow saliva drooling. She clamped her mouth shut and swallowed, corrosive mucus bubbling painfully through her sinuses.

There were zombordies approaching from both directions, bracketing her. The ones approaching from the south were being tactical, hiding behind a sturdy piece of medical equipment that rolled on little castors. Gingerly, they pushed it forward, keeping the thick bulk of the defibrillator between them and her. The northern ones ran towards her in a chittering horde, a terrifying wall of gaping mouths filled with finger-length teeth.

The disassembled frankenstein might be dead, but a different intelligence motivated these degenerates – they were trying to push her off this level, force her back onto the stairwell. The floor was strewn with a bloody litter, but she was suddenly, unquestioningly, absolutely and uncomprehendingly _certain_ there weren't any footprints on the floor and, moreover, there had been still-wet footprints pointing up the stairs.

The flavor of the thoughts her mind resonated with was her own. Shallowly-grounded in her psyche, training didn't have a firm enough foundation to be instinct – it easily washed away in the panicked tide of adrenaline stirred by the currents of Mercy's mastermind. Prudence and doctrine were discarded as her precognition called her _Up, up!_ That was where Cassandra was, that was where she should go. And quickly, quickly – quickly before the window closed. No time to stop to think, no time to consider – right now! Not down this corridor, but up and above – that's where her destiny lay . . .

_Come and ssee, little one. Come and ssee what delightss await you if you will only asccept my caressssess . . . A thoussand firess of our jusstisce burning in the scity and beyond! Come and be my lively little firebrand . . ._

Eyes blazing, precognition howling certainty, she fired twice above the charging horde. Hi-ex rounds shattered ceiling tiles, dislodging a tangle of plasteen framing, blowing chunks of rockcrete from the walls, rubble tumbling down to form an impromptu barrier. A choking fog of sundered rock rolled towards her. She spun and fired single-handed – four shots (_twen'y, twen'-one, twen'-two, twen'-three_). Armor-piercing rounds tore through the cart, shattering bones and sending zomborderies tumbling. A dodgem bullet ricocheted up under a chin, pinging around inside a domed helmet like a pinball.

Quartermain glanced north – the things were trapped behind the barricade, pressing futilely against it, gnarled limbs thrusting through. She flicked the shot-selector to full-auto, emptying the mag southwards as she hauled the corpse propping the door open clear. The final bullet in the clip was an incendiary. A hot tide of broiling air – accompanied by a queasy sense of dire premonition – rolled over her as the phosphorescent munition detonated, igniting the living and dead alike, corpses dancing with false-vitality.

She slung the empty gun and pulled the doors shut, zip-tying the handles together and slapping a viscosity ordinance in place just in case. She flipped the mags and reloaded as she trotted up the stairs, not even bothering to glance at the floor, so certain Cassandra's footprints were there merely _seeing_ them would have been meaningless. Behind and below, the glue grenade detonated, epoxy hardening instantly to seal the door.

She sprinted past level nine, pushing open the door to level ten and stepping into the corridor. "Halfway up, halfway through, Jackie," she muttered to herself. She reached behind her, checking to make sure five &amp; six, the final pair of taped mags, were tucked in her belt.

Her hand met empty air. She'd only brought four magazines. She could have _sworn . . ._

"_Not ssoo scertain now, are we, Little-Missss Thunder-Thighss?_"

Gasping, she spun around, gun clutched as tight to her chest as she ever did her stuffed kitten. The doors slammed shut, handles tantalizingly beyond her grasp as she reached for them. They swept through the thick sediment of soot on the floor, kicking up little whirling wraiths. Apart from that and the confusion caused by the shuffling of her own panicked feet, the carpet of black dust was undisturbed for both directions along the corridor as far as she could see.

Cassandra hadn't come up here. _No-one_ had come up here in five years … except her. She was alone, over-extended, without backup, and she was down to her last magazine.

The rising tide of panic which threatened to sweep away the last fragments of her courage and composure would have been incomprehensible to anyone else. She hadn't loaded herself down willy-nilly with ironmongery – she'd let precognition guide her, let her subconscious inform her what she was going to do, what she needed to take. Running out of ammo, getting down to her last clip, firing her last bullet, wasn't simply a matter of no longer being able to use the gun. It meant there wasn't anything left for her to do.

They weren't bullets; they were the grains of sand in the hourglass of her life.

Desperately, she flung her perception forwards even as she grabbed at the handles and hauled. Blackness stretched endless before her, an empty void of unknowing. The doors rattled but didn't open.

"_No, no, little one. Not that way. No sslinking backwardss. Forwardss, my lively little firebrand. Forward into the darknessss, forward to your desstiny . . ._"

Her arms were aching, biceps screaming at her, shoulders wrenched with the effort. Her breath hitched in her chest. "Please," she sobbed, pathetically begging, "please. I wanna go back. I shouldn't have come here. It was a mistake." She didn't want to go forward – because she didn't _have_ any forward. It wasn't that her precognition had deserted her, that she couldn't see it. She could see clearly, see a road that stretched endlessly onward without her on it.

This was it. This was where she died.

"_Oh, don't think of it asz death, little caterpillar. Think of it asz metamorphossiss, asz apotheossiss. Crawl into your chryssaliss; leave your larval sstage behind. Don't be afraid of chansge. Come! Come and ssee what delightss I have in sstore for you. Asccept my caressssess and you sshall be the insstrument of my jusstisce, burning bright in the night._"

Almost against her will, her fists unclenched from the door. "Mama told me not to waste my life," she muttered dully.

"_Sspread your wingss, my little butterfly._"

Boots scuffing desultorily through the soot, slouching to her own execution, she shuffled down the corridor, pulled by an urge she could not name. There had been a fire here, long ago – the plastic panels of the walls were twisted and fissured, melted tiles hanging like taffy from the ceiling. Soot had settled to stillness, a soft carpet of air-light ash hitherto-undisturbed and now sent whirling by air currents eddying around her as she walked.

"Why . . . why me?" she asked the air. The scent of cold, old smoke wafted on it, the sharper smell of heat – not fire, per se, but pure heat itself; heat in the air, heated metal, hot plastic – underlying that. "You've brought me here, separated me from JC . . ."

"_He iss nothing! He doess nothing but hold you back! All of them! Even your beloved Cassssandra. They sstunt your growth, trapping you, conscealing what you can do. Tesst your limitss. Break through. Bring jusstisce to this scity and beyond!_"

"I want to be a Judge," she said softly. "That's all I ever wanted to be. They took me from my family, from everything I knew. I want to be a Judge and serve justice."

"_I onsce thought asz you do, sso limited. But, now I have disstansce from it, I ssee how ssmall my dessiress were, how limited, how sselfissh. Jusstisce is bigger than the Judgess, bigger than The Law. Their mindss are too ssmall, their ssight sso narrow, their bronsze sso tarnisshed. Look and ssee your future._"

A hot eddy lifted her hair, a tendril of scorching wind caressing her cheek. She was sweating beneath her uniform, a thin rivulet of saltwater dripping down her face. Something appeared on the empty road ahead – a pillar of flame in the night, leading to the promised land. A glorious figure, powerful in its femininity, rising like a phoenix from the ashes of death. Hair a corona of flame, eyes flaring green like burning bronze. A spirit, an angel, a _goddess_ of fire and womanhood – breeding and birthing her children in the tawdry tinder of others' lives, scorching and slaying as the wind and her whim changed. Capricious and fey, vivifying and killing, creating and destroying. The goddess gives and the goddess takes away, blessed be the name of the goddess!

_And what_, Quarterman tried to wonder, _will that be?_

"That . . . that's not me," she stammered. "That isn't . . . I don't . . . I won't . . ."

"_Oh, but you can!_" Rindón's voice hissed through the scorched air, psynsed rather than heard. "_You can be all that and more! You possssessss ssuch potenstial! Come and ssee what I have wrought and what will be your desstinty! You have sseen it already, you cannot deny it iss your future!_"

Unwillingly, as if pulled by mere inevitability, if there was will at all certainly not one her own, she moved forward. The smell of burning was deeper here, the air warmer, air currents making her flaming hair writhe. The burn on her palm was painful against the hot butt of her gun, her naked fingers slippery with sweat. She turned a corner, stepping into a treatment room, blinking in the sunlight streaming through the dirty window and seeing what Rindón wanted her to see.

The woman settled into the nest of ashes that had once been a bed could have been her mother – that is, if her parents looked anything like her. They didn't; they were dark of hair and skin and eye, swarthy black-Irish emigres planting their blood in Boston when the crops failed. She and her brothers were inexplicable variations; them icy-eyed with chill-blonde hair, she with hair redder than love or hate and eyes green as the long-abandoned fields of Erin.

But this woman looked like her, as if she were some ancient ancestor Quartermain's own appearance threw back to. She wasn't, though. She wasn't Quartermain's past. She was, as Rindón had promised, her future.

The woman was tall and lean, with a still-athletic body coarsened by wounds and enforced-inactivity. She was – or had been – a Judge; the tattoo on the jutting stump of her left shoulder confirmed it. The barcode was unreadable; sliced by wounds and reassembled out-of-order by scars, it was puckered and crinkled by contraction, cut through by hairless white lines. The woman was naked, clothes long-since burned to ash. Her skin was flushed, her extremities blistered, patches of her body striated with the fibrous shine of long-healed burn scars. Her hair was long, a waving crimson corona that drifted in the scorched air, the sunlight shining through it red-stained, bathing Quartermain in ruddy light. Emerald eyes deeper than mines swallowed the Cadet's past, present and future in a single glance.

"I am waiting for you," she said. "I am knowing you are coming."

"You're a precog," Quartermain realized. "Like me." She furrowed her brow. "You were a Judge, and you were a psi? Did they . . . ?"

"They aren't always knowing what I am being," the woman said. "I am being injured and being brought here. Med-Judge Rindón is treating me and he is realizing I am having the potential to be being a psi. He is helping me to achieving my potential. I am becoming a precog. I am knowing."

The woman's voice was serene and certain, with a cadence Quartermain recognized. It was the sing-song lilt she herself had when she was deep, deep into precognition, when her power controlled her rather than the other way around and she spoke prophecies that came from Grud-knows-where. Perhaps that was it; perhaps He did know where they came from because they came from Him. Wasn't that, after all, one of the things He was – omniscient?

Her grammar was chilling; the tense choice – present progressive, some dimly-remembered grammar lesson told her – wasn't the result of speaking a second language, of uncertainly projecting the linguistic rules of some distant dialect onto English. It was a reflection of how she saw the world, how she saw time, how she saw reality.

She saw it the way Grud saw it. She knew what was, what is, and what will come to be. And she knew them all at once, all in the same way. No past, present, or future – just _eternity_.

The enormity of that struck Quartermain harder than it would anyone else. She knew the confusion and terror of the blurring of the bright lines between now and the two thens. It was one thing to wake in the darkness, limbs tangled in the sheets, not knowing if what you had dreamed was real or not – to do so without being able to tell if the dream was real but just hadn't happened yet was quite another.

She wrapped herself in a silken shroud of grotesque curiosity, weaving it around herself. "What did you _do_ to her?" she asked.

"_Improved her_."

Screwed through her skull, poking between the woman's flaming hair, were metal nubs and antennae, wires along which sickly-green sparks crawled, bulbs pulsing with the same light. A psi-amp, Quartermain realized – a more-sophisticated and powerful version of the ones bolted to the zomborderies' brains. And surgery and drugs, transplants and stimulants, grotesque overgrowth of parts of her brain and atrophy of others. All of it Rindón's work.

If all he had done was play Grud, it wouldn't have been so bad. But he'd made _her_ play Grud; given her power without control, abilities without the wherewithal to handle them. He had made a human being look at time like Grud did, as if she were standing outside of it, as if the fourth dimension was no more consequential than the other three.

And he saw that as improvement.

And so, Grud help her, did Quartermain. At least a little bit of her did; a deeply-buried part of her, perhaps, but one that was gradually worming its way to the surface, the fertile soil of her psyche loosened as the corpse-fingers of Rindón's mind churned through it. To know everything, to see what was coming as if it were happening in front of you, to live every moment in the now – would madness be too-high a price to pay for that? The value of it – to the Department, to the city, to humanity _itself_ – meant it would be selfish madness _not_ to want it.

And, surely, seeing the universe like Grud saw it could only be sanity? And not just sanity, but the purest form of it. So pure the poor unenlightened blunts and those infected with their puny thinking could only see it as madness.

"_Yess, little one, yess._" Rindón's voice susurrated on the scorching sirocco that ruffled Quartermain's hair like a careless lover._ "The higher we ssoar, the ssmaller we look to thosse on the ground._"

"Yes . . ." said Quartermain. Desperately, something screamed inside her, some small part of her clinging fervently to humanity, rejecting the poison of divinity being subtly drip-drip-dripped into the chalice of her choice. _Remember what you saw!_ it begged. _What you know you will be! You _saw_ it! You _know_ it's going to happen! It's your dream!_

_ Don't wake up, don't wake up, don't . . ._

_ "Your nightmare iss over, little one. Sstand with me and sspread the firess of jusstisce. You have sseen your desstiny, the goddessss you sshall be. You possssessss ssuch potenstial, sso musch more than than you ssusspect. Ssee what your ssisster iss, what sshe possssessssess, and know you can be sso musch more!_"

The woman in the bed reached out – reached out with her missing arm, a twisting, writhing limb of roiling flame extending from the stump of her shoulder. Tongues of fire flexed like muscle, brilliant sparks and gledes zooming like nerve impulses. Slender fingers, a flicking heat-haze playing around them, flexed in the hot air, the hand clenching and unclenching. She leaned forward as Quartermain, fascinated, felt the warmth of understanding and belonging blossom in her chest. The two women moved towards each other, fingers intertwining as their hands grasped.

There were no words to describe the sensations; it was more than merely touching – there was, truly, nothing to _touch_. It was a meeting of minds, a mingling of psyches, a touch so intimate Quartermain would have felt violated but for each of them opening to the other. It was more than warmth – it was heat, fire, the scouring energy that could create or destroy, the spark that could illuminate a civilization or burn an empire to ash. There was no pain – at least, not from the woman's coruscating limb. The reverse-eagle electro-branded on her palm burned anew with the heat of voyeuristic satisfaction. _Yess, yess . . . !_

An inferno roared through the galleries of Quartermain's psyche, illumining her mind with dreadful knowledge. What this woman saw – past, present, future, all layered together, a shattered kaleidoscope reassembled into a coherent image, a multifaceted jewel she could finally see in its entirety. She felt the very edges of her self soften, mind melting in the furnace of an awareness man was not meant to have. The cold core of her shied away, her hand pulling back.

"_No, little butterfly. Thiss iss ssimply the ssmelting off of your drossss. Let it go._"

Each of them tightened her grip on the other, Quartermain falling deeper into the flames. The woman – Brandt, Quartermain knew, Vivienne Adeen Brandt – had been a latent psi and Rindón's experiments had awoken her powers, yes, but his research had revealed more than that. This – the power they possessed, the ability to see the future as if it had happened or _was happening_ – was nothing more than the larval stage for something else. A butterfly with flaming wings burning its way out of the chrysalis, a phoenix rising from the ashes. _That_ is what precogs truly were – pyrokenes in potentia, mistresses of flame and fire, goddesses of the most powerful and capricious of the elements.

Goddess. Divine, but not gods. Not some patriarchal projection, an oppression designed to keep her sex in place, ostensibly discarded in the post-apocalyptic world-gone-rad but, in truth, merely re-branded by the Department. If they had a god, it would be Justice – and was _she_ not female, like battered Liberty in the harbor south of Radhattan? Was this not what she and Brandt could be – fiery goddesses of the hearth and the forge, of the fire that destroyed crops or the oven that baked bread. Let the sterile, blunt drones make their wars and salt the earth – only from the bowels of woman could healing for this shattered planet come. After the fire would come the new growth, seeds stirring in the ashes.

The road of Quartermain's destiny stretched clear before her, the hourglass of fire so bright she could see nothing else. Submit to Rindón – who, more than any other, understood what psis could be – and apotheosis would be hers. A new deity, a goddess of mercy and justice; of knowledge, of good and evil, of choosing who lives and who dies. Untethered, unconstrained, beyond merely mortal morality.

Was that not _everything_ she had ever dreamed and more?

She half-turned as a robodoc rolled through the doorway – its ghoulish rubber face had long since perished, a once-white labcoat hanging in stained and shredded tatters. With the mask literally torn away, there was no hiding the mechanical horror of the thing; a clattering nightmare of attenuated limbs ending in scalpels and forces and probes and needles. The lenses of the thing's eyes glinted beneath a dirty glass dome in which a disembodied brain pierced with wires and circuitry sloshed around amid rotten-looking fluid. An unearthly blue-green glow spilled from it.

In the deadzone of Mercy, no robot would function – but Rindón had found, with his usual brilliance and lateral thinking, a solution to that medical problem. This cybernetic surgeon, ordered and powered by his mental energies, could act as his hands for the most delicate of procedures. She looked down at the tangle of machinery lying on a tray in the thing's lap – a compact bundle of circuitry and ceramic, training a skein of silvery wires as fine as matted hair, each ending in a tiny neural implant. A psi-amp, Rindón's gift to her, the means of her deification.

"_Accsept my brand, little one. Be baptiszed by the flamess, wassh yoursself in the fire and be reborn cleanssed of all your idolss._"

Baptized. Washed. Cleansed. A memory cascaded over her. No, not a memory – she had been too-young, and she saw it from outside herself. It came from Brandt, from the insanity of her eternal viewpoint, flowing into Quartermain's mind and flushing the searing galleries clean with a burst of steam. Her, a wriggling infant in white, a babe in arms held over a font, splashing the surface with her thrashing limbs. Howling as icy water – February in Boston in an unheated church with redbrick walls – was poured over her head. Her brothers standing neatly by in order of height, cold blue eyes perfect points on a line, Eliot crying in sympathy with her.

_ I give you eternal life, and you shall never perish. Death will not snatch you from out My hand._

The inferno in her head was quenched, her molten mind contacting as it cooled, squeezing out Rindón's firey falsehoods. Cold oil annealed her softened bronze, confirming what she should already have known – that all of his promises were lies. There was no benevolent goddess of fire, no merciful spirit of the hearth and the forge, no bonfire to keep the darkness at bay. There was only the inferno, a primordial force of destruction that _was_ the darkness, a crimson tide running through human history, burning her towers, scorching her fields, turning her libraries and all the achievements of civilization to cinders, leaving nothing but tears and cold ash in its wake.

The pillar of fire on the road of the future was still there, but now the scales were washed from her eyes she could see it for what it was – an inferno of wanton destruction, a grotesque flame that merely cast shadows and did not illuminate. That was not her destiny, this all-consuming avatar of a perverted feminine – that was Brandt, what _she_ would become. It loomed over her future, an existential threat to her and her way of life, a burning nemesis. She stood – small and humble, in battered black and heat-marred bronze – between it and those she'd sworn to protect.

_That_ was everything she'd ever dreamed of and more.

Now she knew what she faced, she could see through the obfuscating darkness Rindón had used to hide her future from her. A vision assaulted her – a swirling collage of images and impressions, whirling and melting like snowflakes in an firestorm. Her and Eliot trudging through an endless, icy waste – remonstrating, arguing. Cornelius kneeling in the snow before her, frost on his hair and eyelashes, shivering, weak breath barely fogging the frozen air. Tears flowing down cheeks that were already sheets of glass, salty icicles growing from her chin as she begged her brother. The heavy kick of a gun in her hand and Eliot dropping, his blood crystallizing instantly to rubies on the snow.

Her hot, wet, salt-slick mouth on Cornelius' waxy blue lips.

"_No!_" she screamed, pulling away from Brandt. The flaming grip did not tighten – there was nothing _to_ tighten, really – but the fiery hand flared with desperation, searing the skin from Quartermain's naked fingers. She yelped, leaping back, breaking the connection. She protectively clutched already-blistering fingers. "No, no," she moaned. "I won't . . ."

"You are killing your brother," Brandt told her matter-of-factly.

"Liar!" She still didn't trust her precognition, knowing Rindón and Brandt had twisted what she saw for their own ends. Even if she had, she wouldn't have been willing to believe it. Eliot was her elder by two years, her playmate and companion, the brother she was closest to, the one who'd flung himself at the Judges who came to take her away and battered his fists against their armor and cried and cried and cried. "It's a trick! I would _never_ . . ." Taking advantage of her saltwater-smeared distraction, the robodoc lunged for her with a hypodermic. She swung her gun up, knocking its spindly arm aside, and fired.

Bullets shattered its cranial dome, driving fragments of glass into the gelatinous tissue beneath. Fluid spilled and splashed as the thing flailed, thrashing its arms and whirling around. Quartermain ducked, hissing in pain as a scalpel sliced her cheek. She fired again, steel-jacketed depletalloy-cored armor-piercing rounds chewing through its thorax and sending it crashing backwards in a shredded heap of twisted metal.

Her precognition screamed a warning at her a splintered second before a crackling sheet of flame roiled from Brandt's outstretched hands. Desperately, Quartermain flung herself into the soot-thick corridor. A broiling tide washed over her, her back beading with sweat and blisters beneath suddenly-searing armor plates. She ducked and rolled, coming up on one knee and in a cloud of soot and smoke, gun pointed unwavering.

Another gout of flame drove her back – Brandt had leaped from the bed, unexpectedly spry on lean legs trembling with unaccustomed activity. Quartermain flinched, lifting her hand to protect her head. A wave of fire swamped her, strength-sapping heat leaching through her fatigues, trapping itself under the heavy leather. Her hair caught, the air filled with the stench of burning keratin. She stumbled and staggered, tripping over her own feet and landing on her back.

The air was thick with smoke and thin with burned-up oxygen. Quartermain hacked and coughed, eyes watering. She snatched her respirator from her belt, clenching her teeth on the mouthpiece and wiggling her nose to tighten the seal. She could barely see through the smoke and tears. Desperately, she pointed her gun vaguely down the corridor, spraying and praying. Bullets vanished into the roaring inferno, the clatter of her gun deafening. The ejector vomited spent casings, hot brass spinning seemingly-lazily in her vision.

Brandt lurched through the wall of fire, abdomen punctured by bullets. She drew herself upright, the flames behind her falling into place like a cloak, spreading like wings. Tongues of fire lapped from her wounds, skin blistering and bubbling as knotted messes of scar tissue clotted them closed. Her hair was aflame, her body more fire than flesh. She reached for Quartermain with both arms – the left a roiling mass of psionic combustion, the right sheathed in sinewy scars. "You cannot be denying your destiny!" she howled. "You are killing your brother!"

She was the spirit of the inferno, trembling on the very edge of divinity. The last vestiges of cold humanity were catching, smoke rising from them. It would take so little for them to burst into open flame, to burn down to nothing but wind-blown ash and leave naught but the all-consuming, all-knowing goddess.

Quartermain wasn't impressed. She had one bullet left and she knew exactly what it was.

"Oh, go die in a fire!"

The incendiary round caught Brandt in the solar plexus, penetrating before it could detonate or ignite. She staggered backwards, flames fading, left arm vanishing, abruptly looking entirely mortal. She clutched below her breasts, gaping and gasping as she stumbled. Inside her diaphragm, the explosive charge detonated and the magnesium fuse lit, scattering and igniting the white phosphorus.

Eye-boiling-bright sparks vomited from Brandt's mouth and nose, holes burning through her ribcage as her lungs were filled with the stuff, loops of grilled-sosij intestine spilling from her belly. Quartermain scrambled to her feet, yelping as she put her bare hand on a hot buckle, it branding away the reverse-eagle burn on her palm. She lurched backwards, slapping at the burning hair at the nape of her neck, feeling the softened rubber of her boots squish against the tiles. The soot was fine as moondust, almost pure carbon, slippery as industrial graphite lubricant. She cursed as her foot went out from under her and she tumbled to the ground in an unceremonious heap.

Brandt was a flailing mannequin fountaining electric-white sparks. The phosphor flames were consuming her, burning through her viscera, skin, muscle and bone. Whatever peculiar power she might have over fire – the ability to create or control it, to use it as part of her body – she could not quench this dreadful white inferno.

Quartermain struggled to her knees, pushing herself upright. A spike of wet pain burst through her hand as blisters popped, soot driven into her palm. She stood, slipping in the black dust, whorls and eddies of it swirling around her boots. A few yards down the corridor, the still-burning remains of Brandt collapsed into a thrashing, flaming heap, throwing up a cloud of soot with a loud _fwolmpf!_

"Didn't see that one coming, did you, bitch?" Quartermain spat.

Not even she expected the explosion that slammed into her, driving air from her lungs and sense from her head. It lifted her off her feet and flung her down the corridor, riding a bone-shaking shockwave scant inches ahead of the firestorm.

It was the soot, of course – kicked up and dispersed from its silent stillness, mixed into the air and ignited by Brandt's death throes. Quartermain crashed into the psionicly-locked doors. She didn't hear herself scream when she hit – she was stunned-deaf, her head throbbing with roaring noise, eardrums battered – but she felt the agonizing wet pop as her shoulder dislocated. The lock tore from the door with the impact, blue-green sparks bursting from it.

Barely-conscious, she scrabbled backwards as the fireball rolled over her, igniting her uniform, her hair catching. She flipped over, crawling on her knees and all-but-diving down the stairs. A secondary explosion hit, the shockwave and flame-front funneled into the stairwell, corkscrewing up and down. A fist of hard-air punched her in the back, sending her careening down the stairs. She slammed into the rockcrete face-first, her head bouncing off the wall with an ugly _klonk!_ She pinballed loose-limbed down the next flight, a roiling hell of flames around her. She crashed to the level nine landing in an awkward heap, clothes and hair burning, blood trickling from her ears, nose and a deep gasp on her forehead.

One floor below, the tide of zombordelies finally managed to shove their way through the secured door, snapping the plasticuff and ripping the epoxy. They stormed upwards, chittering as they came.

Shoulder screaming at her, Quartermain pushed herself off her face, rolling over to put out the flames on her back, slapping ineffectually at hair that was already burned down to sticky stumps. Her gun was empty, her knife long-lost, too weak to deploy let alone use the daystick. The leather of her uniform was aflame, armorweave softened, straps burned through and the plates stovetop hot, pressing down on her, the searing weight painful even through the firecheck layer.

She fumbled for a grenade – she didn't have the strength to throw it, but she could pull the pin and take at least a few of these bastards with her. She yelped as her grasped the metallic sphere – it was searing hot, the prints blistered from her fingertips in an instant. It was a miracle the explosive hadn't already cooked off. Instinctively, her hand jerked back and she cursed herself for a weak-kneed bitch.

Her left shoulder was a constant pulse of agony, muscles spasming, nausea from the pain twisting her guts. She grit her teeth and forced herself to reach for the grenade again – her fingers were numb from the burns, the tips thickened with blisters; she couldn't hook the pin's loop.

And then they were on her.

She covered her face with her arm and curled up to protect herself as best as she could, hiding the packed horror of eyeless faces that were mostly slavering maws filled with finger-length fangs. Stagnant saliva dripped on her as filthy claws mauled at her, tearing her uniform off and the blistered skin beneath open. She screamed as her wounded arm was jerked, the pain arching her back and exposing her unprotected belly. "Munchy-muchy, lots of crunchy! Roasty-toasty, fat and juicy!" they shrieked.

_Hope you like your meat well-done_, she thought as they grabbed her limbs and hauled her spreadeagle, the first licking its lips and diving in mouth-first. The pain of the bite was nothing compared to what she was already experiencing, but it was enough to throw her into merciful unconsciousness as the rest of them descended on her in a ravening pack.


	14. Philadelphia

**Prog 14 : Philadelphia**

"So, you wanna tell me how you came by this?"

Rhinne asked the question without much hope of getting an answer as she squirted saline into the ugly gash on the girl's face. Sharp splinters washed clear and she carefully plucked the larger fragments free. The Med-Judge was no expert, but they were certainly the right color, gloss and texture to be the fiberglass-and-resin fauxwood used in higher-end walking sticks. There was contusion of peracute aspect just superior of the left zygomaticotemporal suture, in line with the split laceration over the crest of the malar bone. Both wounds were consistent with blunt force trauma, likely sharing an originating event. Forensic analysis of lesions' causes was neither her province nor forte, but everything pointed to a strike by a right-handed individual using an expensive fauxwood cane heavily-topped with a metallic knob; a design favored by local pimps as a status symbol and badge of office.

"Walked into a door," mumbled the girl.

Rhinne raised an eyebrow. "A door," she said dryly. "Dangerous things, doors. Ought to be made illegal. Good job you didn't walk something important into this one."

The girl shifted nervously. September was a warm-enough month in sector nine, but it was clear she'd been out all night and wasn't dressed for it. She was dressed for _something_, though – her clothes were skimpy-and-scrappy, flimsy-and-filmy, too-thin to protect against the cold, tight-and-tiny to frame rather than conceal. Rhinne flicked her eyes over the girl's scrawny limbs – they were mottled with bruises, one or two needle-tracks in the crook of her elbow. She was pale, her eyes harried and cast down. She noticed the Med-Judge's attention and drew into herself, folding her arms to hide both the marks and the hollow of her naked midriff. Rhinne grunted in frustration as her patient hunched her head. "Hold still, drokk it. How can I help if you . . ."

Abruptly, the girl jerked herself free and started towards the door of the clinic. "I shouldn't be here," she said. "If he finds out . . ."

Very deliberately, Rhinne set down her tweezers and unlocked the drawer. She pulled out her lawgiver and lay it on the surface of the desk. At the door, the girl trembled, clinging to the jamb – unsure if she should bolt for it and risk getting three warning-shots in the back. Rhinne picked up the tweezers and lifted them to the girl. "These are for you," she explained. "That," she flicked her head at the gun, "is for him." She beckoned her back to the chair.

"But you're a _Judge_ . . ." the girl moaned.

Rhinne pulled the lapel of her white coat aside. "Blue, not black," she said shortly. "You know what that means?"

"You won't . . . ?"

Rhinne shook her head. "I'm not _allowed_ to," she chuckled. "C'mon – let me clean that wound." Abashed, the girl sat down again.

The doctor worked quickly and quietly, delicate fingers swift and sure, judgment suspended. It was only a minute or two before she was painting a translucent gel into the gash. The girl winced at the stinging pain, jerking her head back, but Rhinne tutted and held her in place. "Do you want a scar, or not?" she explained.

"Not worth as much to him if I'm all cut up," the girl murmured. Rhinne narrowed her eyes and stoppered the ampule. "Do you want to put some more on?" the girl asked nervously. "I mean, just to be sure . . ."

"The applied dose is quite sufficient," Rhinne assured her. "An exogenous addition of TGFbeta3 to cutaneous lesions in adult subjects has been shown to reduce early extracellular matrix deposition. Additionally, molecules are deposited with a markedly improved architecture in the neodermis, resembling that of normal skin. It's also self-propagating," Rhinne said with a grin. The girl blinked once or twice. "The improvement of structural organization in the regenerating lesion, I mean," she explained, not understanding the confusion. "It leads to reduced formation of subsequent cicatrix tissue, compared to an untreated control in _in vivo_ subjects."

"What?" asked the girl. Rhinne sighed.

"In laymen's terms, the application of the cytokine protein inhibits the transformation of the subcutaneous fibroblasts into granulation tissue. It was identified as a key regulator of the scar-free phenotype in embryonic healing back in the 'eighties."

"Whoa," said the girl. "Old school."

Rhinne gave a thin smile. "_Nineteen_ eighties," she informed her. Carefully, she applied butterfly closures to the wound. "That was back when doctors had time to gave a drokk," she muttered. "Nowadays, we just patch 'em up and shove 'em back out. If nothing's left on the gurney, they call it a good surgery."

The girl bit her lip, nervous around angry officialdom. "So why do you have it?" she asked. Rhinne looked at her with a single brush-stroke brow cocked quizically. The girl gestured vaguely. "The . . . the . . . TGIF or whatever." Rhinne laughed.

"TGFbeta3. This is a glycerol suspension with a proteinase inhibitor. Plenty of companies produce the cytokine; it's restricted, of course, but relatively inexpensive. I buy it in and formulate the pharmaceutical preparation myself. It's refrigerator-stable, retains potency for a long time." She shrugged. "No biggie to keep it around," she said easily.

"You have it because you give a drokk." The girl's voice stopped Rhinne's hands where they were working on the 'caf pot. "Thank you, Judge."

"_Doctor_, if you must," corrected Rhinne, handing over a steaming mug. The girl cradled it, warming her thin fingers. "But my name's Michelle."

The girl gawped – the idea Judges were human, let alone had _names_ or actually _used_ them, was foreign to her. Slowly, her face broke into a fragile smile. "Mine's . . ."

"Not relevant," Rhinne said abruptly, cutting the girl off. She took a pull at her own 'caf. "If I know your name, I have to log it," she explained. "If I don't, I just record an adolescent female with split laceration and concomitant bruising in the zygomatic region. Something tells me you'd rather keep this on the QT." The girl nodded, sipping her 'caf slowly to make the moment last.

It didn't. The door to the trailer crashed open, a figure bulky in black-and-bronze thrusting his way through without ceremony. The girl shrieked and jumped, hot 'caf splashing her naked legs. Instinctively, Rhinne snatched her gun off the table – but far too slow had the figure been anything other than . . . "Judge Gibson," the doctor said icily, easing her lawgiver's safety on a second after it would have been polite.

Gibson didn't remove his helmet, but it was clear his glare was fixed on Rhinne as he snapped, "Beat it, whore."

Rhinne crouched by the girl, delicately probing the skin that was already-flushing red. "You know I never charge for my services," she murmured with a seraphic smile. She stood and pulled a tube of lotion from a drawer. "Minor scalding," she said. "Barely first degree. Apply this before you go to bed and after you shower." The girl took it with a nervous smile, nodding her thanks, and offered the cup back. "Keep it," the doctor said casually. "I've got plenty."

The girl looked at the mug – there was a simple logo of a jar held by two hands forming the shape of a heart. _House of Nard_ was written in a half-circle above it, with _Refuge, Assistance, Mercy_ curling below. She turned it over; there was an address on the back. Not far, but a world away. "Thank you," she said softly. She tried not to feel the lynx eyes of the Street Judge sliding over her – his acid revulsion made her feel like excrement – as she slunk out of the trailer.

Rhinne gave Gibson her back as she peeled off latex gloves and pinged them into the garbage like a boy shooting rubber bands. Clinically fastidious, she scrubbed her hands, disinfecting and drying them. "Something I can do for you, Judge Gibson?" she asked eventually.

"You can tell me why someone went into Mercy without my authorization," he growled. "That facility . . ."

Rhinne turned with a speed that surprised even her, the rush of adrenaline diagnostically if not experientially recognized. She felt her heartbeat increase, her skin blanch and the awareness-expanding surge of glucose and oxygen to her brain even as she cut him off, her voice quavering as much as the finger she jabbed in his face. "Mercy is a _MedDiv_ facility, and I'm administrator."

Gibson must have been rolling his eyes so hard they took his head with them. "In a database, _maybe_," he began, "but . . ."

"A black-eagle's making a distinction between de facto and de jure? Really?" Rhinne shook her head in wonder. "Never thought I'd see the day."

For an instant, the merest moment, the lantern jaw beneath the visor's red-X snarled with a loss of control. But then Gibson mastered himself – Rhinne wasn't sure which she found more disconcerting. He sighed and lifted his helmet, revealing a mechanically-handsome face framed by a blonde buzzcut, marring-creases ironed into it by attitude. "You know what I mean. C'mon, 'Chelle," he pleaded, "this is no time for a pissing contest. You know people shouldn't go into Mercy."

Rhinne folded her arms. "Why not?" she asked. "Afraid the angel'll kill them?"

"This ain't funny, 'Chelle."

She shrugged. "I'm not laughing – are you?"

Gibson didn't speak for a moment. He rubbed his chin with his gloved hand – Rhinne noticed the leather was scuffed on the knuckles, worn-white over the pouches of lead-shot sewn into them. Old blood was ground into the seams. "Anderson should have been written-off," he said eventually. "Crazy mutie witch, sticking her nose in. Cornelius has a good rep, but – well, everyone knows about him and Novak. A blonde'll turn his head – you shoulda . . ."

"I should have _what_, Ian? Told an acting DivChief how to adjudicate? Psi-Div were the first people to give a drokk about what's been happening here. You and the rest of the boys in black haven't been any help. What did your boss say when I first came here? 'We're a family here, doc – nine's all about the brotherly love'. I've seen precious little of _that_. Five years, Ian – five drokking years?" She snorted. "I know they say the wheels of justice grind slow, but really!"

Gibson narrowed his ice-blue eyes. "They also grind real small, doc," he reminded her coldly. "Don't wanna find yourself getting caught in 'em. Or _not_ caught, if you know what I mean – this is a dangerous posting. Bad part of town. Lots of tweakers, wanting their sauce." He flicked his head at the metal cabinet bolted to the wall – locked, but that wouldn't stop a determined spark-head. "You think they don't know you're holding?"

Rhinne'd wondered when it would come to this; Gibson could be a charmer, a hard-bitten-but-avuncular good cop in a bad part of town whose two decades on the streets let him knew when to follow the letter of The Law and when to grease the skids to get the job done. He'd accept a slopdog from the vendors, shoot a little hoop in the projects, run a vagrant off rather than in. But none of that meant he wasn't capable of the most brazen adjudication if the situation called for it – wannabe-gangers might not know any better, but color-cut bosses and made-men planned heists to avoid him.

But that wasn't the only reason the sector chief had pinned the bronze to his collar; being in charge of alpha shift in a single-digit sector wasn't handed out as a party favor. It wasn't just given to a merely competent or even exceptional officer – chiefs wanted more from their immediate lieutenants. They wanted people to preserve the peace, perhaps preserve it before they did The Law. Sector chiefs were charged with more than just the prevention of criminality, the sentencing and execution of perps. The six / ninety-four split weighed heavily on them; prioritizing was the order of the day, preserving as much of the thin black-and-bronze line that was always, always stretched until it almost snapped.

That, of course, was why Dredd – a Judge whose reputation on the streets, riding a route rated-and-plated, was second to none – was merely a Senior Judge, not a shift-chief or even a deputy, while his Rose Garden classmates were Tutors and sector chiefs, even zone commanders or staff officers at HOJ. Every sector needed a man like Dredd – to show the green-helmets the path chiefs needed most of them to follow; devotion if not to the letter of The Law then to a non-abstract concept of _justice_. But they also needed men like Gibson who would make pragmatic decisions motivated by utility.

And so that was what Gibson's threat was; not a gauche allusion to intrajudicial violence that might befall the lippy doctor if she didn't keep her smart mouth buttoned, but rather the simple calculus it might better serve the needs of the sector to divert resources away, assign them to other patrols. That was the brotherly love in the place long-ago named after it; a sibling reminder _if you keep sticking your neck out, sister, I might not be there when your throat gets cut_.

Rhinne knew this; it was the unspoken thread by which her existence as de jure administrator of Mercy hung. Gibson or his boss had an in with the heavy-bronze, keeping the ruined facility off their books and on MedDiv's, but they also watched over her, made sure nothing too-bad happened, kept an eye on the place just in case the Angel decided to spread its sable wings of death further over their precious sector. She'd become used to it, used to it like she was the failing clinic, the Angel's victims, the blood and the rain. The oppression of her life was worn around her, pressed to fit her until it was comfortable like old leather.

But something had changed since last night. Having one of the murders attended, having a set of eyes other than those of the overwork-blind meat-wagon teks see the horror had opened her own. She had seen how Cornelius had acted, his concern for not only her but the perps as well, the way he'd nurtured and mentored the cadet. And when Anderson had arrived, distracted by her history and vulnerable in her distraction, Rhinne had thrilled with an envious warmth that was gendered but not sexual as the big man interposed himself between the smaller woman and possible lines of fire. It had been a night for memories; Anderson's must have been painful, but Rhinne's were bittersweet as she was taken back to her childhood in Hong Tong. The smell of steamed-dough, her _gòhgō_ distracting the dumpling vendor, the snatched _jiaozi_ scalding in her infant hand. Running through the alleys, laughing with her brother, pursued by the angry shouts from the stallholder. Crouching behind a dumpster to eat them, fingers and faces sticky with pork juices and sweet sauce. The heavy hand of a Judge on her shoulder, her brother running as she struggled and screamed. The questions, the examinations, the induction into the People's Justice Ministry.

Her brother had left her. She'd done everything on her own since then – her judicial training, her graduation, her transfer to Mega City One, everything.

She hadn't eaten dumplings since that night.

Her brother had left her and she'd traveled half the world to the sector of brotherly love and found a paper tiger she'd accepted because she was so afraid challenging it would tear the thin tissue that was all she had left. She'd been so eager to think she was accepted she hadn't been brave enough to admit she wasn't.

Her brother had left her. She'd watched Cornelius for only minutes, and in those minutes he'd seen him plunge into Hell to bring his sister back.

Another wave of adrenaline crashed onto the shoreline of her certainties, enfolding her and pulling her further out. For years, she'd been on tip-toes in the shallows, convincing herself the sand she was scrabbling at was a firm footing and that she wasn't doing all the work of treading water anyway. The heaving-swell of foam-topped water wasn't an abyss-deep lonely ocean; it was a fragrant harbor of serene solitude.

"I never asked you to bother me, Judge Gibson," she said, snow-cap calm. "I'll do my job and you . . . do whatever you decide." Very deliberately, she turned and gave him her back, pouring herself another cup, hands hidden so he wouldn't see them tremble.

"You know as well as I do this clinic only hangs on because we put our asses on the line to protect you!"

"Hmm-hm." Rhinne swallowed and added a sprinkle more sweetener. She didn't even particularly like 'caf – she'd grown to like real coffee, but with the pressures of keeping the clinic stocked on her personal finances, she couldn't afford it even as a treat. She perked 'caf for guests – it was a very MC1 sort of thing; a big mug o' joe to grease any social occasion. "I do know that. But, then again, I don't." She turned around and leaned against the counter, cup held neatly beneath her chin. "This isn't a _clinic_, Judge Gibson – it's the Mercy Judicial &amp; Civil Medical Center. It's a _hospital_." Gibson snorted.

"The hospital was _closed_, doc! All you've got is . . ."

"''Ceased to accept new patients and taken off the triage and ER registers', please," she corrected him with a seraphic smile. "This is a MedDiv facility, and I'm administrator and you're _not_ and would you like a 'caf before you leave?"

There was thick silence for a beat. "What?"

"A 'caf?" She stepped to one side, gestured at the pot. "It's not good, but it's hot and I know it can get cold on patrol. Leastways, that's what I'm told."

Gibson jabbed a finger in her face. "Don't get smart, doc," he warned. "You know what I mean."

"Yes, I do," she admitted. "But you're wrong. At least, you can't have it both ways." She put her cup down and moved her palms up and down judiciously, as if she were passing a slinky back and forth. "You have to have balance."

"I don't need your ying-and-yang spug, doc . . ."

She shook her head. "_Yin_ and yang. Common mistake. But, no – it's not that. Authority and responsibility, Judge Gibson," she explained. "When it comes to Mercy, either you have both . . . or you have neither." She moved her hands again. "Which is it to be?" Gibson didn't answer but she wasn't waiting for him to. "MedDiv's been wanting Mercy off our plate for years, but someone keeps blocking our requests." She gave an acid smile. "I find myself wondering – just what _won't_ a girl do for a rose?"

"You know as . . ."

"Let me tell you what I know, Ian, and then you can leave and burn up the powdervine. My chief's been trying to close Mercy – _really_ close Mercy – for five years. At my performance review, every three months, he asks me if I want a transfer – _really_ asks me if I want a transfer. And I tell him I'm not here for my health, and we laugh, and I say 'no' and he asks me again and I don't answer and we leave it at that. _You_ know what, Ian?" She pushed herself off the counter and squared up to him. "I don't know I'm here for _anyone's_ health any more, and if that's the case, why is a _doctor_ here at all?" Gibson opened his mouth but Rhinne held up a finger. "_I'm_ talking, Ian – I'm Med-Judge Michelle Kwunyam Rhinne and I'm the administrator here_. _You want MedDiv to handle Mercy?" She shrugged. "Then we'll handle Mercy."

For an instant, Gibson's face could have been cast in plasteen. And then his frosty eyes narrowed and the jawline coarsened by frowns and forty-year-old jowls tightened. "So that's the way you wanna play it, huh, doc?" he asked. "Alright – have it your way."

It was only Gibson looking as surprised as she felt – more, perhaps; his hand flying to his gun, Academy-instinct pushing the Street Judge protectively in front of the Specialist despite himself – that told Rhinne he hadn't triggered the explosion. The windows rattled and the clinic rocked on its suspension. Rhinne clutched at the counter to steady herself. "What the Dok was _that?_"

Gibson was already in motion, leaping through the door and into the plaza. Rhinne snatched her pistol from the table and followed him uncertainly outside.

Smoke was billowing from Mercy's north wing, around floor ten or eleven. Gibson rounded on her, angrily yelling something. She could hear his voice, but not the words. Frustration swept over his face and he lifted his wrist to his mouth, barking orders into his communicator.

A tinkling rain of glass mingled with glowing embers and sparkling gledes was tumbling to the ground, hissing as it hit the still-wet pavement. And Rhinne – who hadn't admitted to the existence of a higher power since she'd last eaten dumplings – offered up a silent prayer for the man she hoped might become her _gòhgō_ and his _jiěmèi_ trapped inside.

**A/n:** Back with another chapter! This is an essential part of the story – what happens outside Mercy is necessary for the tale to be completed – but the exact direction I wanted to take this wasn't clear. A commentator on DeviantArt (yes, I have a DeviantArt account with pictures and so forth on – check my profile for the link!) suggested that Rhinne be attached to PsiDiv after she gets away from Mercy. I liked that idea, and so this chapter needed to delve a little deeper into her, her personality and history. I enjoy this sort of world-building, and this was fun to write.

Gibson is a comic character, a classmate of Dredd and named after the famous comic artist who did such good work on _Judge Dredd_.

Rhinne is, as detailed in the first chapter, Chinese and from Hong Tong (Hong Kong of the Dreddverse), hence the somewhat stereotyped portrayal of her (_Judge Dredd_ has always portrayed other nationalities as stereotypes if not parodies – it is just part of the commentary of the work). _Gòhgō_ means "elder brother" and _jiěmèi_ means sister. The sibling and pseudo-sibling relationships (especially subversions of blood-relation in favor of friendship) are a theme of my work, and so they were appropriate here – and, of course, they fitted well with the revelation of the geographic location of sector nine!

Let me know what you think! All reviews gratefully received.


	15. The Beginning of Wisdom

**A/n :** This chapter contains references to sexual activity and sexual violence. These may disturb some readers.

**Prog 15 : The Beginning of Wisdom**

_ Gaze into . . ._

Cornelius gave one final convulsive heave, gasping as he sat up in bed and thrashed his naked limbs clear of the sheets winding around them. He blinked, pawing at his face and body. _What the drokk . . . ?_

"You're awake – _finally!_" He turned to the source of the voice, his gaze sweeping over the lavish-but-impersonal bedroom. It was all neutral colors and overstuffed furniture, inoffensive pictures on the walls. A beautiful blonde woman was standing near a dresser, her delicate hands busy with a hotel-room 'caf maker, her bent waist making the skirt of the flimsy pink robe lift up over her hips and reveal the lower curve of her shapely little tush.

"Hawkridge?" He gawped at her as the 'caf maker pinged and she turned to him with a petulant pout on her seductive face and a cup in her hand. The robe was loosely tied, her naked beneath it. A deep, deep V dropped to her navel, the contours of her body undisguised beneath the translucent material, it tight over the hard peaks of her fine breasts.

"'Hawkridge'?" she complained. She stepped forward – she was wearing heels, sharp stilettos that made her hips wiggle and her whole body shimmy. She stopped at the edge of the bed and leaned alluringly forward, her robe falling open, one hand caressing his massive shoulder. "That's not what you called me last night," she reminded him. She grinned behind hooded eyes. "Well, twice last night and once this morning," she corrected herself.

He whacked her across the shoulders with a forearm – a hard check. The 'caf splashed on the covers, mingling with the dried sweat and more on the enseamed bed, as he leaped backwards. He was _very_ naked beneath the sheets and he snatched at them, but she – seeming to think this was some kind of game – grabbed them too and whisked them out of his grasp. She jumped backwards, sweeping her arms up to hold them over her head, the robe swinging wide open. "Come and get 'em, big bad wolf!" She put her hands behind her, tangling her wrists in the cloth in self-imposed bondage, conquetishly pressing her knees together and worrying her lower lip in mock-innocence. "I've been _such_ a naughty little birdie . . ."

His breath short and hard, her eyes fighting for his attention above the challenge of her pert, perfect breasts, he dived for her, trying to grab her without putting his hands anywhere important. She writhed and wriggled, pressing herself against him. He caught her by the wrists, but she twisted and fell backwards so they fell together on the naked bed, his hardness pressing into her hot center. "Very, very naughty . . ." she purred.

"What the drokk did we do?" he demanded. Panic flowed through him, but the effect of her body – soft-yet-hard, thighs yielding beneath him, breasts peaking aching inches from his lips, writhing and giggling and wanton – was devastating. She laughed, looked a little offended.

"You don't remember?" she asked, one brush-stroke brow raised. "I've been called many things, but never . . ." She pursed her lips. "_Forgettable._" She yelped in pain as he shook her, her arms bruising. "_Oww!_" she exclaimed. "You don't . . . well, I don't know if you really want a," her eyes flicked suggestively downwards, "_blow-by-blow_ account . . ."

"Frakk you, Kris!"

"Oh, you _do_ remember!" And, suddenly, he _did_ – sweaty snatches of memory coming back to him. He and her, her and him, joined, grunting, writhing, tangled in the bedclothes and each other. Him inside her, atop her, filling her, dominating her. Her fists crushed into the mattress, teeth biting the pillow, hips gyrating impotently, body bruised and battered. When she _did_ get her face out of the bedclothes, it was only to taunt him, urge him on; _Harder. Crueler. Make me pay._

He sprang off her as if she were electrified, stumbling blindly so he collapsed into a chair. She slithered her way off the bed, crawling towards him on her hands and knees. "We didn't . . ." he muttered.

His uniform was draped on the chair, flung there the night before. Hers was scattered – ripped, torn, buckles bent and leather shredded – all across the room. Frantically, he pawed at his, searching for his lawgiver, daystick, boot knife, any weapon. She clambered her way up his calves, her hands resting on his thighs, her head looming over his lap with an unspoken promise. "Oh, but we _did_ . . ."

His hand found the hilt of his knife and he snatched it from its scabbard . . . and stopped. It wasn't Street's broad clip-point, certainly not his personal weapon with the sharpened false edge. It was a spear-pointed needle-dagger with a skull pommel. He turned it in his hand and dully looked at it. "That was the price for . . .?" He shook his head, very deliberately tossed the dagger down. "No," he said, his voice uncertain. "No, I didn't . . . this isn't real."

She gave a ghastly shrug, abruptly pushing herself off him and getting to her feet. She stood casually, as if the two of them weren't naked in a room reeking with the funk of sex-sweat. "But it might as well be, right?" she asked. "Isn't this what you always wanted? You were infatuated with me, thought about me, dreamed about me. Offering to spot me while I'm working out, 'accidentally' sitting next to me in the canteen, writing me all that soppy, sappy poetry?" She clasped her hands together at her throat, theatrically raising her eyes and reciting; "In falconry, / (an ancient art, practiced by the rich / of ..."

"That was a long time ago!"

Her hands fell to her sides, questioningly open. "And what has changed, really? You're _terrified_ you'd still betray everything you hold dear for me, aren't you? That the only reason you _haven't_ is because I never offered – that my seduction was more powerful than your will, that you only remained pure because I wasn't interested. But that's not what you're _really_ afraid of, is it?" she purred insinuatingly. "You're afraid one day you'll lose control – you'll have a bad day, or I'll piss you off too much, and you'll think the best way to shut up my smart mouth is . . ."

"Don't say it!" he begged. He _knew_ it wasn't true, knew he wasn't capable of . . . of . . . of _that_. It wasn't like him, he would never . . .

"You mean you _have_ never." She interrupted his thoughts as if he'd spoken them aloud – that twinge of unreality was a lifeline in this terrorizing insanity and he clung to it like a drowning man with a rope. "But don't lie to yourself and say you're not _capable_ of it. You've seen it on the streets, seen it in _other Judges_, men you looked up to. And in the darkness of the night, alone, when you . . ." her smile widened with innuendo, "_think_ of me; afterward, that's the fear. That one day you'll snap when I push you too far. I wonder," she mused, "how will you do it?"

Both of them were unprepared for the punch. It hit her like a hydraulic ram, spinning her off her feet and and to the dirty alley floor, spitting teeth and blood. He grabbed her before she'd recovered, wrapping his hand in her hair, bending her over her own lawmaster and zip-tying her wrists to the handlebars with her own plasticuffs. "Scream all you want," he hissed in her ear. "Judges're already here."

She sobbed and begged as he sliced her uniform away with her own knife, shivering at the touch of cold steel and the hot, clammy air of the alley. Sobs spiraled into shrieks as he bore down on her, _into_ her, violating her, taking pleasure more in cruel revenge than the act itself. His eagerness, the way he enjoyed and exulted in breaking this teasing little slut and showing her who was boss, how _easy_ and _natural_ it all was, terrified him. Desperately, he wanted to deny this, to say he would never do this, that he wasn't capable of it – but he knew _every_ man was capable of it and, well, here he was . . .

Something itched at his mind – he _shouldn't_ be here, in a dirty alley with Harkridge underneath him, her lawmaster rocking in time with her sobs and his grunts. He shouldn't even be in an anonymous motel with her offering him coffee after a sweaty night of hardpounding passion, him wracked with terrified guilt and shame, facing the line he'd crossed. This wasn't real, it was a trick . . . he was John Cornelius, the son of a _good_ mother who'd taught him right, the top of his class at the Academy. He was a Judge, black-and-bronze to the _bone_, a decent man, a _fair_ man if not a good or kind one, and this was some kind of mind-game or psi-trick. He was in Mercy Hospital, here to rescue Cassie . . .

_ . . . the face . . ._

He swept around the corner of the alley, drew and fired in a single smooth motion. The figure looming over Anderson's manacled form jerked and tumbled into the garbage, brains splattering against the wall. Of the two remaining, one turned to run and caught a round in the base of his spine for his trouble. He clutched at himself, arching his back with a silent scream, pitching onto to his face as the third flung himself at Cornelius. Face transfigured with rage, he swept his lawgiver sideways, pistol-whipping the perp with the sickening _krunch!_ of a fractured skull. One pupil dilated, the other constricting, temple stoved in, the rapist slumped against the alley wall. Cornelius shot him through the throat as he stepped towards Anderson. "Are you alright?" he asked, slicing through the plasticuffs holding her wrists to the handlebars. She nodded weakly as he wrapped an emergency blanket around the tattered remains of her uniform. "I'm sorry, I should have been here earlier . . ."

"Oh, John!" She pressed herself against him, her bruised cheek against his chest, melting against his bronze. "No, I'm fine – they hadn't . . ._ started_." Gratitude swelled within him, but the smile he felt bunch against his body wasn't a kind one. "I don't know why you're relieved," she murmured. "It's not as if _this_ is what you're afraid of."

Icy fingers enfolded his heart once again. "What?" he gasped. She pushed herself away to look him quizzically in the face.

"You've always shirked your responsibilities for me, haven't you, John?" she asked, her gasoline-fire eyes wide with innocence. "You hustled to stay on my case, didn't you?"

"That's not . . ."

"And then you jeopardized an interrogation, just to impress me," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. "And risked your life to save mine. And what about poor Chris – he'd be _alive_ today if it weren't for you." She flicked her eyes sideways and he followed her gaze – the slab he'd headshot wasn't there. Instead, Taylor's dead eyes stared, accusing, from below an emptied skull. "You'd have been on that raid if you hadn't accepted the position on _Aegis_ just so you could share a washroom with me. If you were, you'd have had his back. He was your buddy, your friend, pretty much your partner. He taught you a lot – but you showed him. Ironic, really – him being brought down because of a pretty girl."

"Cassie . . . Chris! Chris, I swear to Grud . . ."

"Hey, bro." Taylor's ice-blue eyes flashed with life and his handsome, aquiline face animated. "Don't sweat it. I'd have done the same. Well," he grinned, teeth framed red by an internal hemorrhage from the headwound, "I wouldn't – but you get the idea, right?"

"And you bailed on Giant, didn't you?" He snapped his head back to Anderson. "You _know_ he was overconfident, getting sloppy. He needed you to keep him sharp. But that didn't matter to you, did it? You wanted to be with me, to be the level seven XO with jurisdiction all over the city. I wonder," she cocked her head as she stepped to one side, revealing Giant's massive corpse, face-down and shot in the back, where the second perp had been, "will you attend his funeral like you didn't Chris'?"

Cornelius stumbled past her, falling to his knees in grief. Blood pooled under Giant, drip-drip-dripping off the gantry he was lying on, flowing into the swirling pools of the water reclamation plant in a stream exactly as salty as the sea. "I . . . I _couldn't_!" he sobbed. "I had to be on _Aegis_. With you . . ."

"Oh, I know – isn't that the whole point? And with Chris and Giant gone, what will Daz do in one-nineteen? You _know_ she relied on you. Certainly more than she should have – I mean, you just ditched your responsibilities and ran away to go play knights-and-princesses with me in a fairytale balloon. What will happen there, I wonder? All that effort, all those deaths and sacrifices – will they be for nothing?"

"Cassie, I . . ."

"And that girl! The one you gave coffee to – I mean, the one the shift before you left everything for me. The slidewalker, Jackie's age. Cold and vulnerable – you ever run her pimp down? You ever solve that case? You buy a lot of girls coffee but, I wonder, how many of them do you really help?"

"I spoke to Daz," he moaned, "she _promised_ . . ."

"And you think she can _keep_ that promise with her best men gone? You flashed the bronze and sent her on her way. How's her pimp going to take that?" Behind her, the young woman – a girl, really, a mere child – appeared, slumped against the wall, cowering and shrieking, raising her slashed arms to feebly defend herself against the gaudily-clad monster looming over her, a bloody knife in his hand. Cornelius started forward, but Anderson caught him by the arm, spinning him around, her hand around his bicep. "Too late, John," she said as the pimp drove the tip of the blade into her nostril and carved a bloody switchback through her screaming face. "It's already happened. There's nothing you can do about it."

"No, no," he sobbed, falling to his knees again, clutching at her boots. "Daz _wouldn't_ . . ."

"She had no choice!" Anderson thundered. "But you did – and you _chose_ to go with me. I even _told you_ I wouldn't take you away, that you were needed, but you didn't listen. You insisted; you wanted to be with me and drokk the consequences! What about Roxy? She relied on you in one-nineteen more than anyone – but you just dumped her, left her alone, riding patrols with Judges who don't care and won't help her keep that rating. If she gets a patrol partner at all – I mean, credits to frynuts she'll go it alone and like as not end up like this."

Cornelius jumped up with a cry, rushing towards the lawmaster. His beloved cousin wasn't manacled to it – they hadn't needed to. They'd stripped her, bending her back over the gas tank, her beautiful face mottled with bruises, one eye battered closed, cuts and welts and bite marks livid on her pale flesh. Even in death her hair was magnificent, a tumbling tangle of midnight curls. Thick, dark blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, other fluids not her own splattered elsewhere, the ugly bruise of a broken neck worn like a collar. He cradled her head in his hands, hot tears splashing on her sightless eyes. "Roxy . . ." he whispered, "I'm . . ."

"You're not sorry – if you were sorry, you'd never have done it." Anderson's words were unbearable because they were true. "You're _still_ justifying it, not admitting you did this because you were selfish, because you wanted _me_. _That's_ the truth, _that's_ what you're afraid of. Not losing me, or losing any of them – but shirking your duty for your own ease, comfort and pleasure. And that's _just_ what you did. What about Jackie?"

Cornelius planted a kiss on the cold, dirty brow of his cousin and slowly stood. "What about her?" he asked in suddenly much more confident voice. Anderson shrugged.

"She's here, alone, without you, because . . ."

"Because she _chose_ to." Cornelius stepped closer. "And Chris and Daz and Giant _chose_ to. They managed before I was there, and they'll manage now I'm gone. Roxy knows the risks and she's no fool. Jackie's alone because someone's playing headgames – probably _you_." He poked her, hard, in the chest and she went staggering back, surprise on her face. "You ain't Cassie and you're _late_ – you can't save all the starfish, and I'm not a Rookie who thinks he can."

_ . . . of fear._

A hand fell on his shoulder, tips naked and touching his own flesh, leather over the palm, fingers curled. He spun, knocking it off, daystick cocked to strike. He gasped, lowering his weapon and guard when he saw who faced him. The exquisitely-featured blonde woman gave a spug-slurping grin, blue-grey eyes kinking. Dressed for the octagon they were standing in, in justice-blue sports-bra and briefs, nothing of Novak's powerful figure was left to the imagination. She stood with feet her impressive shoulder width apart, the heavy muscles of her thighs bulging, midriff dense below the modest and well-contained breasts softly heaving with relaxed breaths. She slung her trademark daystick over her shoulders, wrists resting on it, hands with their calloused knuckles hanging quiescent in the fighting-gloves. Her smooth skin was pale, faintly-flushed with exertion, perfumed and polished with a light sheen of sweat.

Cornelius was suddenly fifteen, ten, _five_ again – a wide-eyed boy alone at the Academy, searching for his place and finding it in Novak's advanced classes and the hand-to-hand teams. Inside this terror fantasy, stripped of his self-delusions, what this woman had been, and was, confronted him. When he was five, she'd been a surrogate mother and had taken the young boy with the uncertain English and vowel-mangling accent under her wing, seeing something in him worth her time. At ten, she was his mentor, spending her spare hours with him, putting the polish on not only for a career on the streets, but perhaps even a Tutor's shield or the heavy-bronze. By then, his native accent was long-gone in day-to-day conversation – although he could slip back into it effortlessly – and her turns of phrase, tone and cadence were obvious in his voice to anyone familiar with both of them.

Tutors mentoring particular students was common; Principal Griffin officially did not acknowledge it, publicly tolerated it, privately encouraged it provided nothing went wrong. Some Tutors didn't like it, Cadets who weren't mentored certainly didn't. Whispers and mockery were common, often directed at the Tutor as much as the Cadet. Cornelius' nickname of 'Novak's Daystick' was certainly both.

By the time he was fifteen, she was thirty-five– the same years between them as before but, with Cornelius uncertainly crossing the gulf that had previously separated them, something had shifted.

Cornelius, himself all-but-naked in J-Dept issue athletic shorts, shivered and swallowed nervously as he remembered those years, trying to fight physiology. As if aware of his memories, Novak smirked and licked her lips. She flipped the daystick off her shoulders and swaggered towards him with a confident, leonine stride.

"I may not be a ten," she growled, "but the boys say I clean up good."

And that she did. She wasn't some delicate, pitch-perfect beauty – she was hard and clean, magnificent and powerful. And, yes, all the boys _did_ say she cleaned up good – Cornelius had been one of them.

He'd been fifteen; a lanky, gawky kid still growing into his spurting bones, shaving more often than he needed, his voice cracking and breaking. He'd thought of her, dreamed of her, as more than a mentor, never anything like a mother. He'd struggled against it – even then, he knew it was ridiculous, an impossible fantasy. But she'd been the seed for what happened between him and Hawkridge. Oh, who was he fooling? _Nothing_ had happened between him and Hawkridge – she'd merely been there and happened to be blonde-haired and blue-eyed and coldly distant enough to confuse him. He'd put her on Novak's pedestal, pushed and squished his perception of her into the mold he'd cast around the Tutor. Novak's own warning's about Hawkridge came back to him – she _wasn't_ what he'd thought she was, never would be.

What he'd wanted was _Novak_. And he still did.

Then he was slender and awkward, narrow-necked and shallow-chested compared to the Tutors she trained with, weaker and less-skilled. Now, he had eight inches and one hundred pounds on her, a chin that was gray with stubble scant hours after he'd shaved, her equal in most disciplines and her master in some . . .

She laughed. "Yeah, _right_," she snorted. "As if." It wasn't entirely clear what she was mocking.

He stepped forward, fist tightening around his daystick. He couldn't help himself, once-again living out his fears, not confronting them but plunging blindly and blithely into them. "C'mon, Kim – I've always . . ."

He doubled over with grunt of pain, a meaty slap echoing as she drove the hilt of her daystick into his solar plexus with the full strength of her heavy shoulders. Her knee came up into his teeth, snapping his head back and splitting his lip open. "Pathetic," she spat.

He staggered back, bile rising in his gorge, nausea twisting his guts and his head ringing. He dabbed at his bloody mouth. "I don't wanna hurt you . . ." he began.

"Oh, _please!_" She actually laughed, spinning her daystick in her hands. "Like you _could_." He had an instant's warning as the baton arched towards his head – enough to block with his own weapon, but it was a feint. Her shin flashed upwards and crashed into his side. Agony as bruised ribs flexed. He tumbled backwards, trying to keep his feet, as she shook her head dismissively. "You're not afraid you wanna frakk me," she taunted him. "You're afraid _you ain't worthy of it_."

The mention of his fears brought him back to himself, let him remember the figure in the isolation ward, tearing itself free from confinement. One of Rindón's minions, some pet psyker reaching into his head and playing mindgames. This wasn't real – this wasn't Novak any more than it had been Hawkridge or Anderson. He shook his head, wheezing and coughing – no matter how much he told himself this wasn't actually happening, he couldn't make himself believe it.

Her punch laid him out on the floor, tongue bitten through, blood spraying from his mouth, nose broken. "Look at you!" she mocked. "One little punch and . . ."

He spun on the floor, sweeping her feet from under her. She regained her equilibrium even as she tumbled, coming down with her knee in his throat and twisting him into an agonizing armlock. His shoulder screamed at him, the joint hyperextended, bone grating on bone. Windpipe crumpling, carotid constructed, he yelped in pain as she drove a flurry of jabs into his unprotected side. "Tap out, you weak-kneed son-of-a-spug," she hissed.

He looked at her through a gray fog, eyelids fluttering, on the verge of blacking out, only the agony she was inflicting keeping him conscious. She'd handled him like a child, putting him down in _instants_. He couldn't breathe through the pain in his chest, every tendon and sinew in his arm burning, bone feathering to greenstick fractures that preceded the final break. With the limited movement he had left, he shook his head. She snarled and redoubled the pressure. "Tap. _Out._"

There was no-one, not even him, who could bind your arm like Kim 'Supernova' Novak. She could have broken it by now, at least separated his shoulder with a wet, tearing snap and a final spike of crippling agony. But she wasn't going for the break, or even really the submission. She was going for _painful truth_.

A crushing sense of weakness, of failure, of fleshy decay enveloped him. The pain did more than merely hurt – it reminded him of his mortality, the inevitability of his eventual collapse and obsolescence. "You're pathetic," she whispered. "It was _one_ little bullet. The armor took it. But you still can't even bench worth a damn _two-weeks later_. How's the arm? Six months and it's _still_ weak? You thought you were all that, didn't you? But the big guy in the narcofab showed you, didn't he? Wrench the knee, crack the ribs – and what about what Rawne did? Those scars _ache_ in the cold, don't they? Even that tumble at Cedar Point took it out of you. You're _failing_, piece by piece, bit by bit. Held together by pins and stitches. Bones replaced one by one. You go 'round with Jackie and she gets off the mat faster than you do."

He gurgled out a chuckle. "You know they've got joints made of boing at . . ."

She snarled and tightened the pressure around his neck, put another ounce of force on his arm. "You were so good at the Academy, weren't you? My favorite, the best . . . provided it was in the classroom or the octagon. You can go fifteen rounds, but you'll _never_ make it fifteen years." She punched him in the jaw, shattering teeth. "Give up," she taunted. "Tap out. Why prolong the inevitable?"

_Why, indeed?_ It would be so easy to give up, to not surrender to the inevitable but flee from it, to make the pain go away rather than face the truth of his fears. Because she was _right_ – his failure, his gradual tumble injury by injury and year by year into obsolescence, was inevitable.

But so was _everyone's_. It wasn't a question of _if_, or even of _when_ or _how_. It was a question of _why_.

_Si amicus Dei es, descende de cruce._

His smiled; his nickname _was_ JC, after all.

He let his arm go.

He screamed as his shoulder popped with a spike of wet agony. The ball and socket separated, the humerus snapping as it folded in her hands. She howled in frustration, a wail of despair cut off as he slithered on the mat, driving a knee into the side of her head. He was atop her in an instant, situation reversed, thumb in her throat, elbow locked, knees pinning her arms. She struggled, the storm in her eyes flashing to fear. He tightened his grip, crushing her windpipe.

"Because that's the idea," he hissed. "I exist to be _sacrificed_. To be _spent_. Maybe all at once if I'm lucky, but more likely piece by painful piece."

"It . . . won't be . . . for . . . anything _worthwhile_ . . . !" she gurgled.

A twinge of doubt flickered in his eyes and his grip slackened on her throat. But then his jaw and fingers tightened again with determination. "It'll be for _something_," he spat. Her trachea crumpled with a gristly crunch, cervical vertebrae dislocating as the light in her eyes and the hallucination in his faded.

Cornelius eased himself off the nurse's corpse, unhinging creaking fingers one by one. His right shoulder was a sea of agony, but as he lifted his fingers to touch his brow, breast and clavicles the pain faded and the limb moved easily. Gingerly, he pressed the bridge of his nose and ran his tongue along his teeth. Everything hurt as if it had been real, even though nothing had. The nurses lay dead or dying, fatally-wounded by his initial salvo with the blockrocker. They'd lost more of their appeal than most corpses did – the fine lines of their lithe limbs had coarsened, their clothing more 'nurse's uniform' and less 'grinder's costume', frakk-me-heels and stockings replaced with sensible flats and ancient (and decidedly-unsexy) scrubs.

Their hair was a matted, filthy mess – but even in the fading green light he could tell none of them were blondes.

That the dark manipulator of his fears had chosen to make them appear as grotesquely-gorgeous blonde lovelies wasn't something he wanted to dwell on. He shivered and turned to face the figure lurking in the darkened corridor.

Backlit by the distant sun, the sepulchral creature's face couldn't be seen, but as much as terror could show fear, it looked frightened. Abruptly, it turned and ran.

Cornelius sighed – he wasn't about to chase after it, not with his heart still pounding and limbs trembling. Besides, he'd wasted enough time. He plucked a grenade from his belt and twisted the timer with expert estimation. He pulled the pin and sent the munition skittering down the corridor. He turned away.

Behind him, the grenade detonated, a hard punch of hot air ruffling his hair and shoving him half a step forward. Gobbets of body bound in thick canvas and straps splattered into the corridor. He paid them no attention, reaching behind his hip for a magazine.

He froze when the second explosion came, the doors rattling and the whiff of fire and flame coiling between them. He slammed the magazine home and racked the bolt, shouldering his way through the doors and bounding up the stairs, desperately yelling the Cadet's name as a maniacal slobbering echoed from above.

**A/n :** I wasn't sure exactly how to handle Judge Fear – because that, of course, is who this guy is (or was, or will be!) One of our heroes had to fall foul of him, but couldn't die (because that would ruin the story). When I came up with the idea of making Brandt and Quartermain both precogs and two sides of the same coin, that left Cornelius facing down his fears . . . something that was interesting to engage with. As a reviewer has said, Cornelius always seems to have it all together – so it is cool to see him lose his spug, so to speak. But, there are hints given of his fears in the stories – he's afraid of his lust for Hawkridge, of his attachment to Anderson, of what he might do for either of those, what he might _already_ have done for them. And, of course, there is Novak and his relationship with her.

This chapter is really about her more than anyone else, I think (although we do get a couple of tantalizing glimpses at Cornelius' cousin Roxy – mentioned in "Shakedown the Dream" - and the ultimate fate of Judge Giant – those of you familiar with the _Block War_ storyline might recognize what is going to happen!) But this chapter explores the relationship between Novak and Cornelius, as well as explaining just _why_ he had the thing for the blonde-and-blue Hawkridge (and perhaps Anderson). The relationship between the two of them isn't, perhaps, all that healthy – although it is maybe inevitable given the nature of judicial training. We haven't met Cornelius' biological mother yet (although she has been mentioned) and one wonders what these two women's relationship might be.

Readers might be dissatisfied with the way Judge Fear is defeated, or at least his power overcome, by Cornelius – but this isn't really "Judge Fear" here. None of the Dark Judges encountered so far have truly assumed their power – hints of this were given in the last chapter with Quartermain and Brandt; they are larval creatures right now, their power _in potentia_ rather than realized. Death will free them from their constraints.

So, Fear (or Timor, as we should call him) – and Fire (or Brandt) – isn't as powerful as he will become, or is in the comics. He is learning his craft here, a psyker playing mindgames rather than the powerful monster we see later on. And, as well (and this is something I want to draw on later); the Dark Judges' motivations are not as simple as "life is a crime". Rindón explicitly desires to bring some kind of justice to the world. Brandt wants to be the very greatest Street Judge (that is what Quartermain was tempted with). Timor is SJS – and a _good_ SJS / internal affairs Judge. He wants to make other Judges better at what they do, help them with their worries and fears. Of course, after Rindón torments him, this desire is twisted – but there is a part of Timor / Fear that wants to help other Judges confront and even _overcome_ their fears.

Anyway – just some notes! Let me know what you think – please leave a review! And check out my DeviantArt page, which has a bunch of pictures and so forth on it (link in my profile).


	16. Excruciation

**Prog 16 : Excruciation**

_All men dream, but not equally._

She was running through the woods, feet crunching and ankles tangling in tinder-dry leaves piled deeper than memory. The trees were burning, limbs aflame, bark catching, long-forgotten damp in musty mulch hissing to steam and flinging sparks and gledes into the smoke-thick air. Branches branding her as she raced, falling to the floor, thick taste of clay in her mouth, crawling naked through the ashen mud.

The wolves were behind her. Chasing. Ravening. Relentless. Hungry. No matter where she went, how she ran, they were always there. Swift on their silent paws, leaping through the flames, flitting like shadows between the boles of the trees, wraithing like smoke in the smirched sunlight. Lean and gray and terrible and tireless.

That had been her first time, that night at her great-grandmother's house, sleeping in her grandmother's bed. She'd dreamed screaming, screaming when a blazing wolf with burning eyes snapped its jaws closed on her wrist and jerked her back with an agonizing wrench of her shoulder, screaming when she was flung in a bruising tumble through the conflagration, screaming when the rest of the pack descended on her in a tide of slavering maws, biting deep, deep, _deep_ into her abdomen into places she didn't know she had.

She'd woken screaming in her great-grandmother's house, in her grandmother's bed, wearing her mother's nightgown and screamed anew at the pooling crimson. Screamed as she kicked the once-pristine white sheets clear and stared uncomprehending between her legs. Screamed until the old woman opened the door and flicked on the light and enfolded her in her arms and whispered, "Hush, hush, acushla," until she was calm enough to listen to more.

The bathroom, and a washcloth wet with lavender, and one of her grandfather's old cotton undershirts cut into strips and bundled into new underwear. Tears dried and a clean nightdress, herbal tea sipped sitting on the edge of the bed and the old woman explaining in her croaking voice, tiredness and dementia calling Quartermain by the wrong name once or twice or three times; her mother's name, her grandmother's name, even names from deeper in the family tree her great-grandmother had unfolded in dusty scrolls on the dining room table the evening before. Slipping out of English into Gaelic, but the message was clear. _You're a woman now, Jacqueline Fiona._

A question and an uncertain nod. A golden medal of stars and a cross and hearts around her neck, given with resigned sadness out of the box of a refused gift with her grandmother's name on it. A kiss on the brow and clean sheets pulled up around her chin and the click of the light and the darkness of night and sleep and the dream again; the fire in the trees and the yellow gleam of the wolves' eyes like jaundiced stars in the night.

But different now. A massive black-maned wolf with gold-flecked eyes, standing over her and flinging the curs of the pack whimpering away, smashing them against the trees, sending them slinking and whinging. A roaring, righteous anger of black-and-blue-and-bronze. One of its gigantic paws clamped firm over her mouth, pinching her nose shut. _Can't breath, can't breath, can'tbreathe, cantbreathecant . . . !_

She'd awoken, then, with a start and a gasp, tangled in sheets drenched in sweat but not blood, padded curiously on bare feet to her great-grandmother's room to find the old woman cold and still in the peace of death, prayer-worn beads tangled in her fingers. They had been gnarled in life, twisted with arthritis and her daughter's ingratitude – but now it seemed as if knuckles had unbuckled and the hands under the young girl's were smooth and supple. A 'phone call and she remained by the bed, reading from an ancient, unfamiliar book ancient and unfamiliar words that nevertheless haunted her and itched at new parts of her self. _Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei._ Finally, shaken back to herself by the heavy hand of a Judge on her shoulder; a hand that had never left her.

But now Quartermain came to with that gigantic hand clamped on her face, nostrils pinched shut between thumb and forefinger with grotesque strength, surprisingly-soft glove-leather an airtight gag stretching from cheek to cheek, fingertips brushing her ear, the sensitive skin of her nose nipped by the crack in the resin-scab . . . Eyes wide and uncomprehending, she kicked and bucked as best she could, struggling to get free, yet another scream pinned in her throat.

Cornelius triggered the fire suppressor in her face, blowing her flaming hair out in a burst of frozen halon, playing the jet of inert gas over her smoldering uniform. His hand lifted off her face as she gasped, sucking down a welcome lungful of cold air laced with bromotrifluoromethane. Relief, a sudden glut of oxygen and the halide made her lightheaded and giddy. "We out of the woods yet, boss . . . ?" she slurred.

Unfairly-handsome face grimly composed, hands and blade working with a disquieting expertise, he chopped through the straps of her armor to get the searing plates off her and sliced her still-smoking uniform away. Dark eyes narrowed with concern – firecheck had mostly saved her from the raw flames but not the penetrating inferno-heat, and here and there the zomborderies had clawed and torn through the protection. First-degree burns over almost all of her body, second in places and one or two patches of third. Glenohumeral dislocation was obvious, left shoulder square and spasming. Her pale-blue tank was shredded – the bloody garment ripped easily away, revealing her wounded abdomen. Painful, extensive, but only just-beyond superficial. He would never say it to her, but the padding layer of puppy fat around her muscular core had probably saved her from something worse. Her skinnier classmates might not have fared so well.

_None of her classmates would have fared so well_ he realized as reversed the grip on his knife and slipped the hilt between her teeth. "Bite down," he ordered. She was still out of it, groggy and barely-conscious, halon-drunk, but she obediently clenched her teeth, pouting lips working on the synthi-leather. She giggled.

"You're kinda chunky-hunky . . ." she murmured.

He ignored her, injecting muscle relaxant and shifting his grip to his shoulder. "Ready in three, two . . ."

She screamed as her separated shoulder reunited with a savage _pop!_ she felt more than heard. He'd gone on _two_, the son-of-a-spug! Her mind snapped back quick as her bones. "Gruddrokkit it all to spugging _stomm!_" she howled. "Gimmie some _warning_, willya?"

Cornelius was still holding her down, grip like iron pinning her shoulder immobile. "_Language_, Cadet," he rumbled warningly. He bent to her abdomen, administering basic field surgery. She'd got the measure of the pain by now and her face barely twisted at the autocauterization and the sting of the staples. "Sorry, Sir," she muttered as he peeled open bandages and strapped her shoulder. Warmth spread as the volatiles in the adhesives boiled off, flexible epoxy curing to a semi-rigid brace. She gingerly probed at the slick cast with blistered fingertips, bloody serum dripping from burst blisters on her palm. Slowly, almost unbidden, she turned her hand over and spread the fingers. Soot was driven into the wound from the buckle's flash-heated prong and bar. A too-neat-to-be-deliberate cross stared back at her. "Thank you," she whispered.

Perhaps knowing she wasn't talking to him, Cornelius didn't answer. There was a canister of sprayskin on the floor; not the regular stuff, but the specialized one for burn victims. It had fallen from where she'd tucked it into her belt – she must have packed it, prodded by precognition, perhaps without realizing, before they left _Aegis_. It seemed a lifetime ago. He used it lavishly – there was enough in a single can for full coverage on an average human, and with her body almost completely covered in burns he wasn't going to skimp. He pretty much helmetted her head, matting down the scorched-stubble that had only minutes before been a crimson corona. Regular sprayskin contained a strong topical analgesic – it would keep wounds clean, staunch bleeding, prevent infection and promote healing – but this stuff was also laced with a sophisticated metamaterial. As he watched, gray-pink liquid dried to a shiny black film, amber threads of heat-conductive pseudo-metal crystallizing into an intricate bronze lattice. The resulting flexible carapace would wick thermal energy from her body only so long as it was above blood temperature, sucking the heat out of her burns in seconds and preventing further injury without risking damage from cryopacks or, Grud-forbid, _ice_.

He'd lifted her up, supporting her so he could reach all the places she was burned. For a precious minute, she simply slumped against his shoulder, eyes closed and breathing controlled, letting the painkillers and her training do their work. Eventually, she wrapped her arms around him in a brief hug and pushed herself away.

"You dropped these," he said shortly. She opened her eyes.

He was holding out a pair of blockrocker magazines taped together jungle style. Five &amp; six. She took them and exulted in the wave of mingled relief and vindication. The broken bodies of a dozen zomborderlies were strewn in shattered tangles around the landing; floor, walls and even ceiling painted with splatters of their blood. "Sorry, boss," she said.

He looked up from where he was crouched by the dislocated remains of her armor. "What for?" he grinned. "Hunky-chunky's a compliment, right?"

Visible even though the flush of her burns, she blushed. "No!" she exclaimed. _Oh, Grud – had she really said that?_ "I mean, yes! I mean, you're not chunky-hunky. I mean, you are, but . . ." She fled into attention. "I mean, for running off. I shouldn't . . ."

He stood up, cutting her short. He'd hastily-repaired her armor-web with plasticuffs and slipped it on her, ratcheting it tight. The pale-blue powder-coating had blistered off, burned black or away to reveal the metal heat-discolored to amber-bronze beneath. The black duty-belt was next, cinched so it rested comfortably on her wide hips, empty holster strapped around the pillar of her broad thigh. She stood immobile, swaying slightly, eyes half-hooded, several last-gasps beyond the limit of a Cadet's strength. Her eyes snapped open as he grabbed her wrist and slammed the butt of the blockrocker into her hand. "This creep's playing mindgames, frakking with our heads. We stick together and we stay focused. Got it?"

She nodded, checking the gun's action and slinging it over her shoulder. The movement pulled at the tight carapace of sprayskin, sharp edges of gunmetal painful against her burns. "Got it . . . JC." The nickname pricked at her and she grasped at her throat, fingertips dulled by sprayskin frantically searching. A pang of loss and grief welled in her heart, immediately replaced by a swelling sense of relief and embarrassment as she saw the tiny gold medal held with delicate love in his gloved fingers. "Oh, Grud, Sir – I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't, not with uniform, not at all, but . . ." She stiffened back into trembling attention as his massive fist closed around her dogtags. Tears beaded in her eyes as he jerked them off her. _Oh, Grud, he wasn't going to . . . ? _"It won't happen again, Sir," she promised in a begging whisper.

Silently, Cornelius threaded the ball-chain through the medal's loop and kissed the gold before slipping the tags over her head. He put his finger in her face and locked eyes with her. "Never," he said seriously, "ever, _never_ disrespect _Nuestra Madre_ again. You wear this with your tags. You _get me_, Quartermain?"

A lump in her throat, she nodded. "Yes . . . yessir. But, but . . . Cadet uniform regulations . . ."

He cut her off with the _cha-chick!_ of a chambering round. He flicked his chin to draw her attention to herself, a voluptuously-judicial figure in black-and-bronze. "I don't see you wearing pale blue," he pointed out reasonably.

She stiffened into proud attention, ignoring the painful tugging as the synthiskin pulled at her burns and the dull ache in her shoulder. She locked it away, stuffing it in a tiny box in the corner of her mind. _I am the bronze, tempered by the fire, dross burned away in the crucible. I have come through the fire. I am justice. I am The Law._

_ I am lost_.

"We don't know where she is," she realized. "I ran off, I lost the trail, I . . ."

Cornelius shook his head. "Where?" he asked. "That creep split us up at level five, tried to mindfrakk me, sent you chasing a wild radgoose. Where'd you last see her trail?"

"All the way up!" she exclaimed. "That's the problem! I saw her footprints . . . no, wait. I _didn't!_ I didn't – I _know_ I saw them, but I _didn't_ see them." She furrowed her brow and put her head on one side. "Does that make sense?" she asked. He shrugged. "Whatever. Anyway – I didn't see them, not after level eight. He . . . he . . ." Her face twisted with panic, her breath shuddering in her chest. "He wanted me to go . . . to go up there. To face . . . to face _her_. So that he could . . ."

His massive hand was soothing on her wounded shoulder, bringing her back to herself. "We're gonna find Cassie, and we're gonna kill this creep, okay?" he promised her. She nodded, uncertainly perhaps, but agreeing nevertheless. He smiled and squeezed her shoulder, setting off down the stairs. She sighed, trying to drive the crystal-clear vision of Eliot lying dead in the snow at her feet from her mind, and followed after him.

oOo

The explosion two floors below her wouldn't have been loud enough to shake Anderson from her trance – the Angel's immaterial grip was tight on her mind, trapping her beyond reality and leading her where he wished her to go – but it wasn't sound that jerked her free. If she were more in her right mind – carefree, irreverent, unwilling to admit and wanting to hide she was making so much of this up as she went along – she might have said she _p_synsed the _p_sound of _p_silent _p_sionic _p_screams.

A spear of agony, a flare of fear, a wave of crushing compassion mingled with bitter self-recrimination and the desperation of denial, quickly forged into a blade of determination quenched in discipline. She knew the flavor of those thoughts – the justice-blue, lapus-lazuli solidity of a black-maned wolf sprinting to the defense of a pup. Her mind's tongue laved around it, tasting it, welcoming it, a name forming in her consciousness . . .

_No! He is not for you. He has deserted you, forgotten you. He no longer cares for you._

Constricting pain enveloped Anderson's head, squeezing her thoughts to dissuade them from chasing rad-rabbits of knowledge down the warrens of her mind. Out of recently-learned habit she stopped hunting. But a fragment of disquieting defiance remained. "That's . . . that's not true," she quavered.

_Taste and see. He is for her, now. His concern is for her safety. He does not even think of you._

There was a void in her sensations, an aching wound like a missing tooth. She could not remember what had been there, what was absent – but the emptiness left her bereft. The memory of emotion tantalized her. She flailed in the lonely darkness for names she couldn't be sure she'd ever known. "He's . . . they're . . ."

_She was a lively little firebrand. She could have been so very much, but she turned away from purity and embraced dross. But the bronze cannot refuse the crucible and she that could have burned so brightly for deathless eternity has flamed and flared out. What will he do when he finds he is too late to save her, that she is naught but dust and cinders?_

"You're . . . lying . . ."

_His heart will turn to ash. He is not special like you and I, Cassandra. He will give in to despair and he will leave. And then you will see the truth; that you are my special girl and only I love you. Only I have . . ._

"You're lying!" The spongy vegetation choking the atrium absorbed Anderson's voice, but there was enough of it left to echo down the zigzag flights of stairs. "He . . . he'll save her, protect her! And he'll . . ."

_ She is already dead, and he has already failed. They were not strong enough, Cassandra. Could not be strong enough, even were I to deign to help them. They are not special like you and I. Only you are strong enough to withstand the crucible, only I can refine you as bronze in the furnace and burn away your dross. Only you and I, Cassandra. Do you not remember?_

Anderson could feel the claws in her mind, tugging on her, talons raking through her personality and gouging deep into her very self as they strained to pull her further from clarity. She slumped down, knees bruising. "I . . . it wasn't . . . you weren't . . ."

_I was_.

"There were others!" she shrieked. "The other children!"

_You were my special girl, Cassandra – the only one I ever loved! I was the only one who loved you!_

Waves pounded the shores of Anderson's psyche, surf chewing away at an eroding beach, determination running through her desperately-grasping fingers like sand in an hourglass. "Yuh . . . y-yuh . . ."

_ Yessss . . . !_

She clenched her hands around the icons of her shame, bone-white knuckles cracking. She bent forward, sobbing, forehead pressed to the cold tile, and then arched back, spine bending as she suddenly screamed; "Nuh . . . un, n-n . . . _NO!_"

She sprang to her feet, pains and weaknesses forgotten. The Angel stood there, no longer a disembodied voice but neither the glorious, gorgeous, gleaming lie of magnificent and terrible beauty. The veil had been ripped and a malevolent specter of bone loomed before her, a death-white skeleton dripping with rank decay and festooned with hanks of rotting flesh. Black flames lapped around it, waves of freezing-fire leeching the little heat that remained in her denuded body, not illuminating but still casting years-long shadows.

"_Sso it comess to thiss, doess it, Cassssandra? My sspecial girl defiess me? Thowss the love I lavisshed on her back in my fasce? Betrayss the only one who loved ssomeone as wretched and ssinful asz her?_"

"You never loved me!" she howled. "You _used_ me, you only cared for me because I was _useful!_"

"_I loved you!_" the thing roared, the psionic shockwave of its anger knocking her back a stupefied pace. The weight of its emotion crashed into her psynses, showing her the dreadful truth – that, in his own twisted way, Rindón _had_ loved her, had cared for her. She felt doors unlock in her psyche, oubliettes yawning open and memories flying free. He had only wanted what he thought was best for her. His vision a mantle of dark justice spreading over the city and beyond. "_Only I ever loved you!_"

"Liar!" she screamed. "There was . . . they were . . ." She faltered – names remained beyond her grasp, but their faces loomed in her mind's eye. "The big man! The nice man! And the nurses, and the other doctors! They cared about me!"

"_They cared only for themsselvess! They didn't love you asz I did! They thought sselfisshly! I ssacrifisced everything for you! I nurtured you and loved you and coddled you under my wingss asz an eagle doess her chickss!_"

"You stopped me from seeing my _daddy!_" she sobbed. "And you . . . you . . ." She staggered, beautiful face running with horror as a tsunami of memories swamped her. "You . . . hurt them _all_," she whispered.

"_I refined them asz in a crucsible, ssmelting away their drossss. If bronsze cannot sstand the forge, the fault isz in the metal not the ssmith. They were too weak, too flawed to fasce the fire . . ._"

Anderson furiously shook her head, her battered brain screaming at her as it sloshed in her skull. "You _destroyed_ them!" she yelled. "The other children, Judges, the . . . the nice man." She couldn't remember _how_, but the outline of that memory was unmistakable, an unilluminated bulk looming in her mind, sensible to her touch but not sight. "Your . . . your own _friend_," she realized.

A presence lurked beyond the archway leading into the wing, on the other side of the anteroom with its animal pen filled with rotted bones, bars black and greasy with lanolin. Past the decontamination shower pitted with rust and encrusted with scale. Beyond the bulkhead with its armorglass window, the porthole translucent with frosting and filth that had oozed between the layers, rivet holes and seams between plasteen plates sealed with the same epoxy that cemented the barrier to the bars hastily welded to the frame of the corridor.

There was a hunger there, a hunger she remembered, but not as she remembered it. Then, it had been simple and reactive, stimulus-response rather than cognition, a process so far below thought as to not truly count as a mind save for the smallest, tiniest fragment buried deep within the most base of biological imperatives. Years before, the fear had been that seed might germinate, sprouting a bud that would blossom into some dark flower. But that wasn't what had happened.

"It _ate_ him," Anderson whispered. The word was inexact – not merely because bacteria did not metabolize energy in the way a macroorganism did, but because he hadn't really been consumed. He'd been . . . _consummated_. The quarantined presence wasn't the psychic infection she'd sensed roiling in the boy in the bubble, nor was it the unfortunate doctor who'd studied it. It was a symbiotic fusion, the result of an unholy communion between the two. The shards of human psyche that sloshed amid the bacterial empire were obsidian with despair and desperation, mournful guilt and the bitter poison of failure. A hatred of Rindón, of humanity, of all that lived. An impotent rage thrashing against the hermetically-sealed prison, years of starvation and cannibalism whetting hunger to a knife-sharp blade. "You _fed_ him to it."

As much as a skeleton stripped of flesh could smile, the thing smiled. "_He wass . . . ssloppy. Quite unlike him. Normally, he was sso careful. But, one little misstake isz all it takess when dealing with infectionss._"

Anderson shook her head, a furious denial. "You wanted to see what would happen . . . if a human subject were consumed. It was just an _experiment_ to you. Your _friend_. You treated him like, like . . . a lab animal."

"_Perhapss I did, but it wass not I that made him ssloppy,_" the Angel assured her. "_He attempted ssuiscide, onsce he wass infected. Sshot himsself in the head. Missssed the brain sstem, though._" It laughed, a sound like slabs falling into a pit. "_Sshould have sstudied anatomy more clossely. He sstayed alive long enough for it to ssuck up hisz ssoul._"

Anderson's stomach was empty of everything except bile and a syrupy glob of burnt-grease 'caf. Even so, she felt the pressure rise in her gorge. She swallowed the vomit down, acid burning the back of her throat. A dreadful calmness descended on her. "You," she said decisively, "are a bad man."

The thing laughed again. "_Yess, I am. But you are no innoscent either, my sspecial girl. You sshared in my vishion, though remembransce sstill eludess you. Look at you,_" it taunted, "_jusst look at you. Weak and pathetic, hiding behind tarnisshed bronze and your own addictionss. Why did I ever think you could sstand the crucsible, to be refined into bronsze? There iss no bronsze insside you; you are nothing but drossss._"

Anderson hung her head, the gasoline-fire of her butcher-blue eyes dimmed with tears, the sight of her shame held in each hand blurred but unmistakable. He was right – she was weak and pathetic, unworthy of the love he had lavished on her, unworthy of the effort the Department had put into her, the exceptions and exclusions, the special cases made for her. She'd never been good enough to be a Judge, never been good enough to be accepted on her own merits. And how had she repaid them? With lies and deception and trickery, with rebellion and self-denial.

"I'm a bad girl . . ." she whispered.

"_Yess, yess, Cassssandra. You are a bad girl, sso bad no-one elsse could ever love you. Come, come to me and I sswear I sshall . . ._"

She lifted a hand to silence the monster. "I'm a bad girl," she repeated, "but I'm better than you. Weak?" She shook her head. "Don't you _dare_, you son-of-a-spug. I'm not the one hiding behind illusions, lurking in a condemned building, murdering his friends. I'm a _Judge_, out on those streets every day. I work for _justice_, to help good people get by in this hellhole of a city. Don't lecture _me_ about who's on the side of the angels, you drokking creep. I get to _save lives_ – you don't."

The thing didn't seem concerned. "_Ssuch pretty poetry. Sshame it'ss all liess. What bronsze you think you have is tarnisshed by your dependencsies. You sstrut on thosse sstreetss, but how many of those citiszenss looking up to the goddessss with the sshield know what ssecretss sshe keeps in the cornerss of her heart? You are weak, Cassssandra, weak and flawed._"

Slowly, firmly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, Anderson opened the hands she'd kept clenched desperately tight for oh-so-long, letting go of more than the symbols she held. The bottle of pills and the prescription pad fell to the floor and she felt herself fall too into an uncertain future. But she did not look down or back. "I'm done," she said quietly. "I'm done with that, and with you. You lied to me, you abused me, you . . ." She shook her head; there was so much, so much she could have said – she knew there was more than she truly knew, perhaps more than she would _ever_ know, but she did know arguing would be a waste of time. "You ain't nothing but a bat-spug-loco punk," she said decisively, turning to leave, "and I'm done talking."

_ Tlak-tlak-tlak._

She sighed – the thing was clapping, flapping its bony hands together in a mocking parody of applause. _Whatever_. "Not listening," she repeated.

"_Now you are sstrong enough,_" it hissed after her – there was no panic, no urgency in its voice, only satisfaction as if its plans had, finally, come to fruition. "_Now you are sstrong enough to fasce the truth._"

She had her hand on the banister, was gingerly limping down the stairs on her wounded feet. "What-_ever!_"

"_Don't you want to know what happened to your daddy?_"

She'd turned back and was up the stairs before she realized what she'd done, fresh tears streaming down her cheeks, the pain in her feet forgotten. "I don't _need_ you to tell me!" she sobbed. "You killed him, or you let him die. Whichever it was, it doesn't matter. He was dying when I brought him in – I know that now. He didn't have long left. You kept that from me, strung me along so I'd be compliant, so I'd be your special girl. You . . . you wanted to take his place," she wept. "You wanted me and so you tried to be my daddy and you hid him from me and didn't let me _see_ him and I _hate_ you for that. I _hate you_ and . . . and _we_ are going to bring you to justice. Me and . . . and . . ." She scrabbled for names that remained just beyond her memory's grasp.

The thing shook its head and laughed like wind whistling between tombstones. "_No, Cassssandra. No. If that were the casse, I would let you leave. But that issn't what happened. We're the ssame, you and I. That iss why you cannot return to the scity exscept asz my emissssary. You are forever sseparated from them because of the thingss you did._"

"I'm nothing like you."

"_Yess, yess you are. You remember your father dying, don't you? You remember him sstruggling in pain, gassping for breath, crying out your name . . ._"

"N . . . n . . . no . . ."

"_Yesss . . ._"

"John! And . . . and Jackie! John and Jackie!" She chanted the names like a mantra, a talisman to cling to. "John and Jackie – they came for me! _John!_" she screamed desperately, her voice echoing down the stairwell. "_Jackie!_ They _came_ for me!" she yelled in the thing's face. "I have _friends_. I have people who _care_ about me! Who . . . who _love_ me."

"_You're alone,_" it taunted. "_They have come far, but they will not come through my gauntlet unsscathed, and even if they ssurvive they will not like what they ssee. Nor will you when you ssee what you did._"

"I don't want to know," she lied. "I'm not interested. _John! Jackie!_"

The hideous revenant towered over her, the rictus grin of its gaping skull filling her vision, her gaze trapped by the wytchfires burning in its eye sockets, black flames and the stench of the grave enveloping her. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart stammering in her chest. "_You missundersstand,_" it whispered. "_It wass not a requesst._"

And then the full, monstrous weight of Mercy's malevolent psychic intelligence plunged into her weakened and battered psyche, smashing through her defenses and tearing down the last flimsy curtains of her forgetful denial, throwing her screaming into a world of nightmare.

**A/n :** Finally got around to finishing this – how long has it been? _Too long_ I think. I will admit, I have found it difficult to work on this – been busy at work, got distracted by various things, unable to find time to write. Also, I wasn't entirely happy with this chapter – I am still not (and so, please! Any suggested revisions would be gratefully received!) But, I decided I just needed to get it finished and done.

Some interesting things in here – people familiar with the _Engram_ storyline from the comics might recognize where this is going (although I am _not_ going to exactly the same place it went – I didn't like that storyline, really, and I think within the context of the movieverse and Anderson's clear love for her parents).

Something that some readers might not care for (and, if you don't, I will cheerfully admit I don't give a fig) is the Catholic imagery in the first part of this chapter. Quartermain is explicitly Catholic, and it has been _strongly_ implied in _Highway Don't Care_ and _Shakedown The Dream_ (as well as earlier in _Angel's Mercy_) Cornelius is too. Well, now it is absolutely, explicitly stated that he is … and, of course, Rindón was too and he has used Catholic imagery after he became Judge Death.

In earlier chapters ("The Beginning of Wisdom" and "Lively Little Firebrand") there are instances (very much so in "Firebrand") of events which are explained either by divine intervention, or by Cornelius &amp; Quartermain _thinking_ there is some kind of divine intervention. As I have said before, Christianity (and especially Catholicism) has a long and storied tradition in American law enforcement. The idea that a major world religion would all-but-vanish in less than a century (as it has in the comics) seems unsustainable and unrealistic. I can see it being far less popular and less part of the culture of Mega City One than it is of the USA, but its adherents would likely be as passionate as they are now (if not _more_ so).

Of course, the question of whether or not it is _real_ divine intervention is left up to the reader to decide – but, remember; we are dealing with psychic powers and undead creatures that in any other setting would be "magic", so . . .

All reviews and comments gratefully received. And check out my DeviantArt page – link in my profile. Many pictures there, as well as a rather cool competition to draw scenes, characters etc.


	17. Disarmed

**Prog 17 : Disarmed**

Resistance was light on level eight. The dark intelligence that motivated Mercy had thrown most of its strength against Quartermain at the entrance, trying to drive her back to the stairwell and upwards to meet Brant and her destiny. The two Judges – she following in the wake of his Tutor-precise CQB – moved through the corridors junction-by-junction, methodically securing each intersection with calm discipline and a minimal number of expended rounds.

It was only strength of will and ingrained doctrine that prevented Quartermain from cutting loose with the blockrocker, raking the few zomborderies they saw with full-auto fire. She had two magazines left, and she knew – with dreadful certainty – she wouldn't need a single bullet more than she'd loaded. The desire to hurry through this, to get Mercy over and done with, was almost overwhelming.

_It doesn't work like that, Jackie,_ she told herself. _It doesn't work like that._

There was no clear trail to follow – Anderson's injury had probably scabbed over after she pulled the shard of glass from her foot on level five, and the floor of the former pediatric wing was so filthy with rotting blood, black in the chemlight and churned by innumerable shuffling feet, it was impossible to discern the psi's footprints. But it was certain Anderson had come this way – the effort put into keeping them off this level was proof enough of that.

Rindon had wanted each of them alone. That had been his plan all along; separate and manipulate, playing with their minds and preying on their fears and insecurities. It was all a trick, lies designed to make them see the world the way he saw it, to recruit them to his side. None of it was true. She just had to keep telling herself that.

_Are you sso scertain, Little-Missss Thunder-Thighss?_

Cornelius had taken point, moving quickly along the corridors back to the main stairwell. Each level in the wings had the same basic layout. There were minor changes – partition walls built, areas opened up to create larger spaces – but nothing too confusing for people born and raised in an urban jungle. He turned a corner, snapping his gun to his shoulder but not firing. For the first time since they had entered this level, his face shuddered out of stoicism.

He took a staggering step backwards as Quartermain dashed up, gun lifted. "Oh, Grud have mercy . . ." she gasped.

There was a woman – or, rather, what was left of two women – crawling along the floor towards them. A lumpen torso made up of a patchwork of quasi-healthy muscle and hunks of rotting meat dragged itself forward on four working limbs, trailing another four decayed stumps behind it. A grimacing skull with desiccated eyes lolled next to a grief-stricken face, the two heads joined by translucent tubes. "My sister's sick!" the thing wailed. It grabbed something from the floor – a stinking handful of excrement or offal buzzing with flies. "She won't eat!" it screamed, jamming the crawling, maggot-thick mass into the dead head's mouth. "Will you be our friend?"

The still-living head exploded as Cornelius and Quartermain simultaneously fired, blood and brain matter splattering their feet and calves. "If Cassandra came though here . . ." Quartermain began.

Cornelius shook his head; he knew the horrific possibility she was driving at. "Rindon wants her alive," he told himself as much as her. "You heard what he said; all that spug about purging her, making her strong. He wouldn't let . . ."

"These were the _children_, boss!" Quartermain almost screamed, her voice on the very edge of hysteria. "These aren't his zomborderies, they're not controlled by him. They were just _kids_ and he . . . he . . ." She couldn't bring herself to look, merely gesture. "He did _this_ to them. They'll _hate_ him, hate the one he loves."

Cornelius stared at her as if she were mad. "'Loves'?"

She looked up at him with haunted eyes. "You're not a psi, boss – you don't . . . _know_ him. You can't feel him, inside you, scrabbling at the walls of your mind. Dirty, sticky little fingers, clawing through . . ." She scrubbed her hands over her face, slid them over her plastic-sheathed scalp. She shuddered and sighed. "He's one sick puppy, boss," she said eventually.

"She's alive," he promised her. "She's alive and . . ."

"What if you're wrong?" she wailed. He stopped, stupefied. "What if he got fed up with her? Or she resisted him? Or he couldn't protect her in this madhouse? What if she just _bled out_? What _then_, boss? What then?"

He set his jaw. "Then we do what Judges do, _Cadet_," he ground out through gritted teeth. "We engage. We sentence. We _execute_."

Quartermain looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. "How can you . . . ?"

"I'm here for _justice_," he said – again, perhaps just as much for his benefit as hers. "Not love, not compassion, and certainly not revenge. I'm a Judge – I don't do those things. I do justice."

Quartermain looked at him for a long second, green eyes piercing him. "I thought you only lied to Cassie," she said quietly. For an instant, Cornelius stared blankly at her. _Mirar en la cara del miedo, pequeño Juan._

And then Quartermain was in motion, running past him, a splintered second before the scream. Anderson's voice, unmistakably so, laced with fear and despair, echoed through the corridors. _John! Jackie!_ His name, howled as a desperate entreaty into the void, galvanized him into a sprint. He raced after the Cadet, caught up with her in moments, barreled past her, accidentally clocking her in the back and sending her stumbling into the wall. "Cassie!"

She struggled upright and ran after him – too-fast to secure junctions, rounding corners too-quickly to check them, doctrine discarded in a flurry of emotion. Her awareness had narrowed to a narrow cone directly ahead, her speed-smeared peripheral vision useless. For such a big guy, Cornelius could _run_ – she was flat-out sprinting just to keep up. She tried to tell herself it was her injuries and the constricting effect of the sprayskin that slowed her – but Cornelius was rated-and-plated in full kit and was outpacing her with ease.

He was ahead of her, charging forward, running into ambushes, discipline forgotten, gun long-empty and no time to reload. He was fighting hand-to-hand, daystick flashing. His strength and size – not to mention skill – meant the zomborderies hadn't really laid a fang or claw on him yet, but it was only a matter of time before he tired or slipped up and the horde dragged him down.

Because they were really coming out of the woodwork now. Just how many of these things _were_ there? The place was thick with them, it seemed – clambering over each other, filling the corridors with a veritable wall of clawing hands and gaping, fang-filled mouths. Cornelius sprinted past a junction without even a glance – three or four of them skittered out of it behind him, loping along the floor, clinging to the walls and ceiling. They sprang towards him, claws leering. She raised her gun and desperately cut them down.

_Not good. If he's not watching his own back, he's certainly not watching mine._

She turned just in time – more of them were charging towards her. She spun and fired. One dropped but another slammed into her, throwing her backwards. That saved her life as the rest clawed the air where she'd been an instant before. She landed badly, skidding on her tush and tumbling awkwardly over. Somehow, she ended up on one knee and with her gun pointing in the right direction. She fired.

The hi-ex detonation blew the lead zomborderly into a bloody rain of stinking hash. The expanding fireball caught them, tearing off limbs and tossing them about like toys. It slammed her in the chest and abdomen, lifting her off her knees, driving the air from her lungs and punching her in the gut with the hard fist of nausea. She staggered upright and stumbled into the harsh sunlight of the atrium. Her vision was gray, fogged at the edges with bright blotches of color. She leaned heavily on the railing, gulping down lungfuls of spore-thick air, staring blindly down into the decaying garden below.

Her name shouted once again jerked her out of her reverie. She snapped her head up. Four levels above, across the atrium, on the southern side, Anderson was cowering back from something only she could see. As she watched, the older woman screamed, clutching her head as she fell to her knees. From the levels above, a horde of zombordies skittered down the stairs, gnarled fingers latching onto her naked limbs and carrying her supine body upwards like a trophy.

Quartermain grit her teeth, pain and weakness forgotten, and pushed herself off the railing so she could follow Cornelius. He was already sprinting along the landing, swinging himself around the corner, bounding up the stairs three at a time. She took two strides before something dark and ravening caught her in the mind and sent her spinning to the ground. Her head slammed on the marbelite and her consciousness fled for a moment. That probably saved her sanity as her limp mind was tossed like a coracle in a storm by the psychic backwash.

She came to beached and gasping, eyes wide and every synapse aflame, agony spiking through her frontal lobes along with another's memories. She struggled to her feet, dashing across the landing and staggering up the stairs. Her injuries were catching up with her, wounds in her abdomen opening beneath the sprayskin, painkillers wearing off and a bone-deep nausea squirming its way through her body. She all-but-dragged herself onto level twelve, lifting a gun that seemed heavier than a barbell.

The zomborderies had borne Anderson upwards, carrying her to a meeting with a dreadful figure that loomed in Quartermain's subconscious – a skeleton of truth denuded of the flesh of lies. But only some of them. The others had remained here, a desperate attempt by Rindon to save his special girl from being kidnapped. They were fighting Cornelius, swamping him with their bodies, clawing at him and trying to drag him down. It was a last-ditch effort, Rindon's only remaining play to protect her from those who would hurt her . . .

_You know I love her! Don't let them take her from me!_

Quartermain pressed her fists against her temples. "Get out . . . of . . . my head!" she hissed through gritted teeth. Gobs of memory were clotting into her brain, fragments of experience and emotion not her own. Games and jokes, kindnesses and gifts, a warm embrace and a comforting drawl when the nightmares were too much. A softness covering the brazen hardness of the Judges. But darker things, too – a gnawing hunger without appetite, the uncomprehending agony of a child, a desperate, heart-felt entreaty . . . and her reaction to it. _No, not mine. Yess, yess, my little butterfly – yours!_ Her reaction to it; disdain for his compassion, disgust at his weakness, dismissal of his desires.

A Judge – a man, a _doctor_, the title thick like a slur – sending his subordinates away, donning an isolation suit and entering the realm of contagion through an airlock. A pistol held, unfamiliar, in a trembling hand. The disease-ravaged face of a child weeping tears and pus and bloody serum. A forgetting of discipline and the kick of the gun in the hand and the tumbling brass caught in a fold of the sleeve and the hot casing melting through the plastic. The pain of a seared forearm and blisters bursting, exposing raw flesh to the tainted air. And now her own memories – _no, no, not mine. Yess, yess, yourss!_ Watching the barrier being built with butcher-blue eyes cold as the gaps between stars. Turning away once the last weld was run and the last seam sealed, walking past the pens of bleating sheep waiting to be used as living petri dishes.

The sound of a gunshot, muffled as it echoed through plasteen and armorglass. Barely a hitch in her stride and nine-year-old lips curling into a cruel smile as she shrugged and looked up at her mentor. Her own mouth forming the words; "_That ain't gonna be enough_."

Quartermain roared in denial, kicking Rindon out of her head and lurching to her feet. Cornelius was still fighting, lashing out with daystick, fists and feet. She lifted her gun and stepped forward – the space was as she remembered it, only now thick with the accumulation of age and decay; the bones in the pen where the sheep had starved to death, the bulkhead of riveted and epoxy-sealed plasteen and armorglass, the welding torch discarded in the corner. She fired, three-round bursts systematically cutting down the zomborderies.

She erred on the side of caution with her aim, making sure she missed Cornelius and not minding if stray shots hit the bulkhead; even the bronze-jacketed 9mm rounds of a blockrocker wouldn't penetrate the inch or more of plasteen and armorglass sealing the microbiology &amp; virology wing. Cornelius cracked the skull of one zombordery and kicked the last one away, right into her arc of fire. One final three-round burst and . . .

Her smile faded. She'd forgotten wasn't just firing 9mm FMJ rounds.

_Forgotten? Tissk, tissk, my lively little firebrand! You loaded them yoursself! You know _jusst_ what you're doing . . ._

The first round hit the target square in the chest, the second higher and to the left as the barrel jerked upwards with recoil and the body tumbled. The third passed an inch above its shoulder, striking the door like so many bullets had before.

But it wasn't a bullet.

It was an AP round, a pseudo-bullet of lead powder sintered around a depletalloy flechette in an overpressure cartridge. The sabot disintegrated into a puff of dust on impact and the needle-sharp penetrator shattered the armorglass porthole with a tinkle of polycarbonate.

Thick, bloodstained silence fell. Quartermain lowered her gun with shaking hands. Cornelius shook brain-matter from his daystick with a practiced flick of his wrist and jogged past her, towards the stairs. "Let's go!" he urged. She didn't move. "Cadet!"

"We've got a problem, boss . . ." she muttered dully, staring blankly at the bulkhead. The porthole had delaminated, outer layers punctured, inner ones badly fractured, the whole thing severely compromised. She remembered Rhinne's report – a fire in the north wing, an outbreak of drug resistant pathogen in the south; two levels still quarantined. Rindon . . . _and Cassssandra!_ . . . had sealed the ward, sacrificing the doctor inside to protect the city.

_Oh, how naive you are, my little butterfly!_

As she watched, _something_ moved in the darkness beyond the bulkhead – the movement seen not by a difference of color but sheen; black-on-black, gloss-on-matte. A presence slid and slithered, moving slimily between her fragments of clotted memory. Fascinated, as if drawn by a volition not her own, she moved forward, peering through the porthole.

She screamed and leaped backwards when the sheep's skull loomed into view inches from her face, just beyond the cracked glass. Its jaw yawned open, a demoniac shriek hissing between chipped incisors, gobbets of contagion-black slime splattering the window. Spectral witchfires, yellow as pus, crackled with awful intelligence in empty eye sockets. Idiotically, she lifted her gun, only just stopping herself from firing.

A gnarled fist of moldering bones wrapped in a glutinous skein of glistening black threads slammed against the glass, crazing it further. The bones disarticulated, but quickly popped back together with a particularly disgusting squelch. A holocaust of frustrated anger swamped her – it wanted out. It pressed against the porthole, glass creaking, skull screaming.

"Seal it up," she muttered, slinging her gun and fumbling for a glue grenade. "Epoxy's airtight, sticks to anything. Seal it in there . . ." Her burned fingers and trembling hand hindered her and she took her eyes off the perp, looked down – not even a _Rookie_ mistake; worse than that, a _freshman Cadet_ mistake.

"_Jackie!_" Cornelius' massive hand slammed into her wounded shoulder, sending her sprawling out of the way as the porthole exploded in a shower of shattering glass, splattering slime and splintering bone. A geyser of filth spewed from the hole and hit the floor like diarrhea. The stinking puddle gathered itself, bones knitted together by black tendrils of infection into a desperate parody of a human form surmounted by a rotting sheep's skull. It shrieked, lunging for Quartermain with clawed hands that dripped with disease.

Cornelius grabbed its wrist, jerking the talon away from her. It tore off, decaying in his grasp into a handful of moldering bones greasy with pus, a horrific stench rising from them. He retched and gagged as the thing whipped around, screaming in his face. He drove an explosive left-hook into its head, crushing the orbit of its eye and tearing the sheep's skull from its shoulders.

Somehow, it didn't need to see. It lashed out, filthy claws scraping along the plates of his right vambrace, gouges in the blackened metal instantly rusting. He grunted in pain as its index finger slid off and punctured leather and armorweave, a hypodermic-sharp talon piercing his flesh. He jerked his arm back and grasped his wrist protectively, leaping into the air and kicking the thing in the chest double-footed. It flew backwards, splattering against the wall like vomit.

The thing coalesced, scattered bones borne on a stinking slurry, rising up again. Cornelius writhed on the floor, teeth gritted against the pain, unable to unlatch his fingers from around the burning agony in his wrist.

But Quartermain hadn't been idle. She'd scrambled for the welding torch, smashing the tip off on the floor and wrenching the valves open. Grud-only-knew where she'd found a spark – almost-delirious with pain, Cornelius could have sworn she passed the jet of fuel-air mixture over her palm, igniting it into a dirty-edged cone of smoky red-yellow flame.

_Yess, yess! The power iss yourss, my lively little firebrand! Accsept your desstiny!_

Quartermain bellowed, roaring in despair as she trained the flame on the specter of decay. The thing howled, keening in agony as the inferno incinerated the writhing bacterial colony. It slithered backwards, slime crisping to crackling, rotten bones roasting. It wailed pathetically, slopping and slinking as it shrank like rancid butter in a furnace, smoke and a nauseating stench filling the air. It fled towards the decontamination shower, discarding its bones one by one. Quartermain could hear its psionic wail of anguish as it surrendered the last vestiges of humanity, leaving nothing but virulent hatred for the living. The last few droplets slithered down the drain. She twisted the valves closed, the inferno's roar fading.

Cornelius lifted his trembling arm, tugging his glove off with his teeth and drawing his knife left-handed. His hand was pale and waxy, clammy and cold to the touch, sensation dimmed like he'd leaned awkwardly on it. The pain was fading, a creeping coldness seeping up his forearm. He sliced the leather, stripping the sleeve. _Not good._ "Jackie . . ." he said.

She turned and gasped. The wound on his wrist was a suppurating sore, a festering volcano of flesh, black-and-crimson at the edges, the crater bubbling putrid yellow-white pus. The color was leeched as far as his elbow, a rotting green tinge spreading from the wound, veins blue-black with contagion writhing vermiform under translucent skin. As Quartermain watched in horror, the rot spread; liquifying-char claiming more flesh and glutinous gobs of curdled infection dripping to the ground, hours of gangrene happening in _seconds_. Quartermain clapped her hand over her mouth, swallowing heavily as the stench of putrefaction reached her nostrils. "Oh . . . my . . . Grud . . ." she gasped. Gingerly, she reached out.

"Don't touch it!" snapped Cornelius. There was no pain – no sensation at all below the elbow – but the grotesque sight of his flesh rotting and sloughing off was horrifying, the nightmarish fears of fleshy decay the false-Novak had taunted him with coming literally true. His mind raced – what _was_ this? Just what had been quarantined within the sealed ward? What had they let loose into the city? It had to be panic, but he almost fancied he could _feel_ a presence gnawing away at his arm, at his flesh, at his very life. His hand abruptly fell limply forward as the joint failed, pinkish-white bones visible through gaping rents in his skin. The blood-black necrosis had spread to his knuckles and about a third of the way down his forearm, precious ropes of tendons, sinews and nerves snapping one by one.

Quartermain fumbled in her medikit. "Broad spectrum antibiotic," she muttered. "That'll . . ." She stopped as the putrefaction reached the knuckle of his pinky finger, the long white spar of the carpal bone rotting to greenish-gray coral. The digit swung loose, dangling by a thin cord. It snapped and the finger fell to the floor.

Awful knowledge of what had to be done hit Cornelius; the impossible infection was spreading too-rapidly for anything else. He spun the knife in his hand, offering it to Quartermain hilt-first. "Field amputation," he ordered grimly. He jammed a rubber doorstop into his armpit, pressing it in place with a plasticuff around his shoulder. He jerked it snug with his teeth, slipping his daystick inside the nylon loop to twist it tighter.

Quartermain blanched. "You can't expect me to . . ."

Cornelius fired a painkiller into his shoulder, setting his elbow on a discarded crate. The strain of movement tore already-weakened tendons and his hand disarticulated, bones clattering to the floor, splattering amid stinking pus. Radius and ulna jutted obscenely from the bubbling putrefaction of rotting flesh that was his forearm, the flesh pallid and clammy halfway up his bicep. "Do it!" he snapped, his voice on the edge of hysteria.

"Oh, Grud . . ." Emergency amputations were part of the field medicine curriculum at the Academy, but every Judge hoped against hope he'd never have to use it. Frantically, Quartermain tried to recollect hazily-remembered lessons; anatomy, best-practices and strange terms – fish-mouth flaps, guillotine amputations, ligation of structures, preferred stump geometry . . . It was hard enough to recite lessons when grilled by a stern-faced Tutor; it was all-but-impossible in a darkened chamber of horrors with your partner rotting to death before your eyes.

She grabbed his shoulder to steady herself, pressing the blade against the still-healthy skin just below the massive mantle of his deltoid. She winced as she pushed down and sliced – the razor-edge cut easily through the flesh and blood flowed, curtaining over his bicep and running down the blade. His face twisted and he hissed in pain. "I'm sorry!" she sobbed, her hand instinctively drawing back.

"Don't _apologize_!" grunted Cornelius through gritted teeth. He looked with terror at decayed ruin of his arm – the putrefaction had destroyed his elbow, was advancing up his bicep. If she delayed any longer . . . "Just drokking _do it!_"

Tears streaming down her face, Quartermain reversed her grip on the knife and hooked the blade under his arm, slicing to the bone and spinning swiftly around it. Cornelius' jaw clenched and his arm jerked, a scream trapped behind his teeth, but Quartermain was resolute. Face grimly set, she sliced through the last lingering shreds of meat – the stinking sheath of rotted muscle slid grotesquely down the bone in a slurry of pus.

She glanced at him – he was pale with pain, eyelids flickering, lingering on the edge of consciousness. "Stay with me, _oppa,_" she begged. The humerus was pinkish-white just below where she'd sliced the muscle, but the elbow end was gray and dead. She flipped the knife to use the serrated edge. Cornelius flung back his head and howled a single, harsh obscenity as she sawed living bone. "Just a moment more," she lied.

There was no way she'd make it in time; she'd sawn less than a quarter of the way through and the gray contagion was working its way inexorably along the humerus, the end already black and worm-eaten like the bones of his forearm. The disease would creep through the marrow, into his shoulder and chest, eat his lungs, heart, neck, head and brain. She could _taste_ the disease's malignant animus, the fixated, simple-minded psyche of the infection; _infect, spread, grow._ The notion of a conscious contagion was horrific enough, but the fact it hungered to not merely survive and prosper but actually _kill_ was abjectly terrifying. It _wanted_ Cornelius dead, _longed_ to course through his bloodstream to his heart and brain and utterly destroy him, snuff out his life. It was _frustrated_ by its quarantine, bitter jealousy and a desire for vengeance against all that lived festering and growing year after year.

Its disgusting determination galvanized her. She jerked the knife free and gripped it in her teeth, grabbing the roll of detcord from her belt. Normally used to set instant fuses so charges would detonate simultaneously, the thin tube of chemical explosive could also be used as a cutting charge. She wrapped two turns around the bone, tying it off and paying it out as she backed away. Snatching the knife so quickly she nicked the corner of her mouth, her and Cornelius' blood mingling on her tongue, she sliced a long fuse. She sheathed the blade and grabbed her gun, aiming at the tip of the cord.

"Fire in the hole!" she yelled, and fired.

The explosion painted a bright, actinic line on her retinas, detcord vanishing with the suddenness of a conjuring trick. Cornelius screamed as the detonation shattered his arm, splintering the humerus and driving fragments of bone-shrapnel into his cheek and chest. The force of the explosion knocked him to the floor, shaking the tourniquet loose. Quartermain dived for him as blood gushed from the jagged ruin of his shoulder in a bright arterial spray.

The floor was slick with it, her boots slipping as she frantically spritzed sprayskin onto the ragged wound. It hissed when it hit, bio-plastic bubbling and writhing as it chemically seared itself to raw meat. Even through the painkillers, Cornelius arched his back and screamed anew; there was nothing subtle about auto-cauterization. Grimly, Quartermain sprayed until the can was empty. She tossed it away, slumping down as the backwash of adrenaline flowed through her, trembling hands slipping on the bloody floor.

Cornelius lay still, mercifully unconscious, the bubblegum-pink scab of sprayskin pulsing with a thin, reedy heartbeat. Quartermain struggled to her knees and then shakily stood, looking at the remains of his arm.

There was little left – rotting, eroded bones surrounded by a spreading pool of swamp-black pus that oozed and bubbled, tendrils writhing in the air as if seeking something new to infect. The contagion's anger was palpable, frustrated rage hissing at the edge of her awareness. As she watched, it seemed to notice her and moved with dreadful purpose.

Never taking her eyes off the oozing puddle, she picked up the impromptu flamethrower. "Drokk you," she spat. The roaring cone splashed out, bathing the infection with fire. The liquid hissed and shrieked as it vaporized, a psionic howl of pain and frustration. Frantically, it tried to slink away, slopping back towards the drain, but Quartermain was merciless. She kept the flame on it, herding it from its escape, encircling it in a enclosing inferno, hunting down and burning away errant drops until the floor was a scorched ruin and the air thick with the scent of burned mold.

She tossed the torch down, her hands trembling uncontrollably, her legs going weak as the horror finally hit her. Cornelius stirred, his eyelids flickering, and came around with a weary groan. He rolled the wrong way, the stump of his shoulder grinding against the floor. Agony shook him fully awake as he yelped in pain, clutching at the remains of his arm. With a visible effort he mastered himself. "Gruddrokkit it all to spugging _stomm_," he grunted.

The sense of relief that flowed over Quartermain was so overwhelming she fell to her knees and was violently sick.

**A/n :** I will admit, I am not as happy with this chapter (indeed, this story) as I have been with others. But I think I might be overthinking it. Anyway; here it is, for better or for worse! I've found it difficult to write – not had as much time as I might like, when I do have time I don't have the motivation etc. I think I just need to plow on and get it done – I hope you guys enjoy it! (Let me know with a review, eh? :) )

Comic-book readers will recognize (or, hopefully, should recognize!) the character introduced here. I've departed a lot from his comic origins but, in many ways, Judge Mortis had the weakest identity of all the Dark Judges. His name simply means "death" and the idea he would kill people by decaying them was never truly explored. The notion of him as a living infection, a living bacterial colony, was an interesting one (some of this is discussed in the previous chapter, more will be revealed in the next). When I was working with Chinook (on DeviantArt) to come up with the pictures of my imaginings of the Dark Judges he latched onto a key personality element – that he is desperately clinging to his humanity. I tried to reflect that here.

Now that all four of Dark Judges have been introduced (Judge Death only through his avatars, I suppose) it is worthwhile pointing out I drew on imagery of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Death is, of course, Death. Mortis is Pestilence (and will probably be called Judge Pestilence because mortis just means "death"). Fire is War, and Fear is Conquest (his original name of Victor Timor, "conquer fear" in Latin, refers to this – as well as the underlying motivation of Judge Fear; to make those he terrorizes overcome their weaknesses).

The idea of Cornelius losing an arm comes from my original Judge Dredd badfic. There, in the final climactic fight between Cornelius and the clone of Judge Cal, he looses his arm and has it replaced. I wanted to reprise that scene, but with tie it into this story and the fears Cornelius was made to face by Judge Fear. Cornelius told the Fauxvak he was prepared to sacrifice himself, piece by piece if necessary, and he pretty much immediately has to confront that.

But, of course, there are other's fears here – it is strongly implied in this chapter and the previous one it was _Anderson_ who made Yersin sloppy with his containment protocols, and it is _Quartermain_ who fires the round that cracks the window and Cornelius fights the bacteria to protect her. While both women have suffered, perhaps their greatest suffering will come knowing they cost their beloved _oppa_ an arm . . .

Anyway, that's all in the future! For now, I am publishing this. As I said, not as happy as I could be, but I want to get it up there. Let me know with a review what you think!


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